Issue 46, 2020

Selectively detecting attomolar concentrations of proteins using gold lined nanopores in a nanopore blockade sensor

Abstract

Disease diagnosis at earlier stages requires the development of ultrasensitive biosensors for detecting low-abundance biomarkers in complex biological fluids within a reasonable time frame. Here, we demonstrate the development of an ultrasensitive nanopore blockade biosensor that can rapidly diagnose a model protein biomarker, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) with high selectivity. The solid-state nanopores have gold located only along the length of the nanopore whilst the rest of the membrane is silicon nitride. The orthogonal use of materials allows nanopore arrays with a different surface chemistry inside the nanopore relative to the rest of the membrane to be fabricated. The importance of this differential surface chemistry is it can improve the detection limit of nanopore blockade sensors in quantitative analysis. Based on such functionalized nanopore devices, nanopore blockade sensors lower the limit of detection by an order of magnitude and enable ultrasensitive detection of PSA as low as 80 aM. The findings from this study open new opportunities for nanopore sensors in further developments including optical detection and ultralow detection limit biosensing at complex biological fluids.

Graphical abstract: Selectively detecting attomolar concentrations of proteins using gold lined nanopores in a nanopore blockade sensor

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Edge Article
Submitted
19 Aug 2020
Accepted
26 Oct 2020
First published
26 Oct 2020
This article is Open Access

All publication charges for this article have been paid for by the Royal Society of Chemistry
Creative Commons BY license

Chem. Sci., 2020,11, 12570-12579

Selectively detecting attomolar concentrations of proteins using gold lined nanopores in a nanopore blockade sensor

Y. Wu, Y. Yao, S. Cheong, R. D. Tilley and J. J. Gooding, Chem. Sci., 2020, 11, 12570 DOI: 10.1039/D0SC04552G

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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