Nanosensor

Nanosensors are sensors whose active elements include nanomaterials. There are several ways being proposed today to make nanosensors; these include top-down lithography, bottom-up assembly, and molecular self-assembly.^[1]

Overview

Nanomaterials-based sensors have several benefits in sensitivity and specificity over sensors made from traditional materials. Nanosensors can have increased specificity because they operate at a similar scale as natural biological processes, allowing functionalization with chemical and biological molecules, with recognition events that cause detectable physical changes. Enhancements in sensitivity stem from the high surface-to-volume ratio of nanomaterials, as well as novel physical properties of nanomaterials that can be used as the basis for detection, including nanophotonics. Nanosensors can also potentially be integrated with nanoelectronics to add native processing capability to the nanosensor.^[2]

One-dimensional nanomaterials such as nanowires and nanotubes are well suited for use in nanosensors, as compared to bulk or thin-film planar devices. They can function both as transducers and wires to transmit the signal. Their high surface area can cause large signal changes upon binding of an analyte. Their small size can enable extensive multiplexing of individually addressable sensor units in a small device. Their operation is also "label free" in the sense of not requiring fluorescent or radioative labels on the analytes.^[3]

There are several challenges for nanosensors, including avoiding fouling and drift, developing reproducible calibration methods, applying preconcentration and separation methods to attain a proper analyte concentration that avoids saturation, and integrating the nanosensor with other elements of a sensor package in a reliable manufacturable manner.^[2]

Potential applications for nanosensors include medicine; detection of contaminants and pathogens in the workplace, the environment, for first responders, and in products such as food; and monitoring manufacturing processes and equipment and transportation systems.^[2] Medicinal uses of nanosensors mainly revolve around the potential of nanosensors to accurately identify particular cells or places in the body in need. By measuring changes in volume, concentration, displacement and velocity, gravitational, electrical, and magnetic forces, pressure, or temperature of cells in a body, nanosensors may be able to distinguish between and recognize certain cells, most notably those of cancer, at the molecular level in order to deliver medicine or monitor development to specific places in the body.^[4]

Mechanisms of operation

There are many mechanisms by which a recognition event can be transduced into a measurable signal. Electrochemical nanosensors are based on detecting a resistance change in the nanomaterial upon binding of an analyte, due to changes in scattering or to the depletion or accumulation of charge carriers. One possibility is to use nanowires such as carbon nanotubes, conductive polymers, or metal oxide nanowires as gates in field-effect transistors, although as of 2009 they had not yet been demonstrated in real-world conditions. Other examples include electromagnetic or plasmonic nanosensors, spectroscopic nanosensors such as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, magnetoelectronic or spintronic nanosensors, and mechanical nanosensors.^[3]

Examples

One of the first working examples of a synthetic nanosensor was built by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1999.^[5] It involved attaching a single particle onto the end of a carbon nanotube and measuring the vibrational frequency of the nanotube both with and without the particle. The discrepancy between the two frequencies allowed the researchers to measure the mass of the attached particle.^[1]

Chemical sensors, too, have been built using nanotubes to detect various properties of gaseous molecules. Carbon nanotubes have been used to sense ionization of gaseous molecules while nanotubes made out of titanium have been employed to detect atmospheric concentrations of hydrogen at the molecular level.^[6][7] Many of these involve a system by which nanosensors are built to have a specific pocket for another molecule. .When that particular molecule, and only that specific molecule, fits into the nanosensor, and light is shone upon the nanosensor, it will reflect different wavelengths of light and, thus, be a different color.^[8] In a similar fashion, Flood et al. have shown that supramolecular host-guest chemistry offers quantitative sensing using Raman scattered light^[9] as well as SERS.^[10]

Photonic devices can also be used as nanosensors to quantify concentrations of clinically relevant samples. A principle of operation of these sensors is based on the chemical modulation of a hydrogel film volume that incorporates a Bragg grating.^[11] As the hydrogel swells or shrinks upon chemical stimulation, the Bragg grating changes color and diffracts light at different wavelengths. The diffracted light can be correlated with the concentration of a target analyte.

One example of nanosensors involves using the fluorescence properties of cadmium selenide quantum dots as sensors to uncover tumors within the body. A downside to the cadmium selenide dots, however, is that they are highly toxic to the body. As a result, researchers are working on developing alternate dots made out of a different, less toxic material while still retaining some of the fluorescence properties. In particular, they have been investigating the particular benefits of zinc sulfide quantum dots which, though they are not quite as fluorescent as cadmium selenide, can be augmented with other metals including manganese and various lanthanide elements. In addition, these newer quantum dots become more fluorescent when they bond to their target cells.^[8]

Production methods

There are currently several hypothesized ways to produce nanosensors. Top-down lithography is the manner in which most integrated circuits are now made. It involves starting out with a larger block of some material and carving out the desired form. These carved out devices, notably put to use in specific microelectromechanical systems used as microsensors, generally only reach the micro size, but the most recent of these have begun to incorporate nanosized components.^[1]

Another way to produce nanosensors is through the bottom-up method, which involves assembling the sensors out of even more minuscule components, most likely individual atoms or molecules. This would involve moving atoms of a particular substance one by one into particular positions which, though it has been achieved in laboratory tests using tools such as atomic force microscopes, is still a significant difficulty, especially to do en masse, both for logistic reasons as well as economic ones. Most likely, this process would be used mainly for building starter molecules for self-assembling sensors.

The third way, which promises far faster results, involves self-assembly, or "growing" particular nanostructures to be used as sensors. This most often entails an already complete set of components that would automatically assemble themselves into a finished product. Accurately being able to reproduce this effect for a desired sensor in a laboratory would imply that scientists could manufacture nanosensors much more quickly and potentially far more cheaply by letting numerous molecules assemble themselves with little or no outside influence, rather than having to manually assemble each sensor.

See also

• Nanotechnology
• List of nanotechnology topics
• Surface plasmon resonance

References

External links

• Weighing the Very Small: ‘Nanobalance’ Based on Carbon Nanotubes Shows New Application for Nanomechanics, Georgia Tech Research News.
• Emerging Technologies and the Environment
• Nanotechnology and Societal Transformation
• Nanotechnology, Privacy and Shifting Social Conventions
• Nanotechnology and Surveillance