Nanoscale and Manufacturable Sensing Tip for Biomedical Applications

摘要

This paper presents a novel miniature sensing tip structure for various biomedical applications. With such a tiny tip, the sensor has potential to be inserted into cells for intracellular measurements without any label as indicator. This label-free detection method is very useful in biological areas such as DNA hybridization detection and antigen-antibody interaction monitoring. Single-cell analysis (SCA) technology can provide dynamic analysis of interactions within individual living cells, in addition to providing a complement to conventional bulk cell assays. When the number of sample cells obtained from surgical procedures is limited, and cannot be propagated for study, SCA is especially important. It provides a valuable tool for intracellular studies that have applications ranging from medicine to national security.In addition, the sensor fabrication is simple and has potential for batch manufacturing. The sensor performance will be reproducible and uniform. Uniformity and reproducibility are two very important requirements for sensor manufacturing. Unfortunately, most current optical fiber sensors are hand-made one by one, and the sensors' performance is not easy to be uniform. Our novel sensor will be able to address this problem. This may lead to batch processing and a great reduction of the fabrication cost.