Nanostructuring of Patterned Microelectrodes To Enhance the Sensitivity of Electrochemical Nucleic Acids Detection

摘要

Disease diagnosis on the basis of biomolecular analysis requires sensitive, cost-effective, and multiplexed assays. Biomarker analysis based on electronic readout has long been cited as a promising approach that would enable the creation of a new family of chip-based devices with appropriate cost and sensitivity for medical testing. The sensitivity of electronic readout, and specifically electrochemical analysis, is in principle sufficient to enable direct detection of small numbers of analyte molecules with simple instrumentation. Over the last several years, very high sensitivities have been demonstrated for nanomaterial-based electrochemical assays in particular, whereby nanowire- and nanotube-based electrodes have shown some of the highest sensitivities to date. Whether these assays can be made practical and multiplexed remains to be seen, however, as the materials used have not been readily amenable to arrayed and straightforward fabrication.