Multiplexed molecular assays using nanoelectronically barcoded beads

摘要

Barcoding of microparticles has been widely used for performing multiplex genomic and proteomic assays. The most common methods of barcoding are optical and plasmonic which requires large and bulky instrumentation for performing the readout, which is unsuitable for portable devices requiring small instrumentation footprint. We introduce the concept of electronically barcoded micron-sized beads, which to the best of our knowledge, is the first time an impedance based barcoding technique for beads has been used with the potential of achieving high barcode density. Nanoelectronic barcoding works by fabricating tunable nano-capacitors on the micro-particle surface, effectively modulating the frequency dependent dielectric properties of the particles allowing one bead barcode to be distinguished from another. Multi-frequency lock-in measurements of the real to imaginary impedance ratio allows for bead differentiation.