Single Nanopore Transport of Synthetic and Biological Polyelectrolytes in Three-dimensional Hybrid Microfluidic/nanofluidic Devices

Download or read book Single Nanopore Transport of Synthetic and Biological Polyelectrolytes in Three-dimensional Hybrid Microfluidic/nanofluidic Devices written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper presents a study of electrokinetic transport in single nanopores integrated into vertically-stacked three-dimensional hybrid microfluidic/nanofluidic structures. In these devices single nanopores, created by focused ion beam (FIB) milling in thin polymer films, provide fluidic connection between two vertically separated, perpendicular microfluidic channels. Experiments address both systems in which the nanoporous membrane is composed of the same (homojunction) or different (heterojunction) polymer as the microfluidic channels. These devices are then used to study the electrokinetic transport properties of synthetic (i.e., polystyrene sulfonate and polyallylamine) and biological (i.e., DNA) polyelectrolytes across these nanopores. Single nanopore transport of polyelectrolytes across these nanopores using both electrical current measurements and confocal microscopy. Both optical and electrical measurements indicate that electroosmotic transport is predominant over electrophoresis in single nanopores with d> 180 nm, consistent with results obtained under similar conditions for nanocapillary array membranes.