Integrated dielectrophoretic nanotraps for highly-sensitive stochastic immuno-sensing

초록

Owing to the absence of target amplification techniques such as PCR, high-signal amplification is crucial for detecting low-concentration proteins. A nanogap electric device, which exhibits a notable change in conductance upon the immobilization of conducting nanoparticles at the gapped junction, represents an exemplary detection platform for high-signal amplification. In this study, the integration of a nanogap with dielectrophoresis was shown to be an effective transducer for the detection and stochastic quantitation of extremely low-concentration protein molecules. The limit of detection (LOD) for hemagglutinin (HA), a membrane protein of the Influenza A virus, was estimated to be approximately 30 aM. When tested with the virus lysate, the LOD surpassed that of conventional techniques such as lateral flow assay (LFA), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and realtime polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The versatility of this technique was further validated by results obtained using different target proteins through simple modifications of solution-phase reactions.

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