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Laser assisted production of nanostructures for biomedical sensing applications

Hughes, Cian orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-4863-733X (2020) Laser assisted production of nanostructures for biomedical sensing applications. PhD thesis, Dublin City University.

Abstract
With the recent rise of nanotechnology, the cutting-edge of biosensor technology has rapidly progressed becoming more sensitive, accurate and higher throughput than ever before. However, if nanoengineered biosensors are to become as ubiquitous as ELISA assays in general diagnostic applications they first must become more cost-effective. Current methods for the fabrication of nanobiosensor platforms generally rely on chemical processes that are expensive, environmentally destructive and often time-consuming. As nanotechnology matures from a new, exciting technology into an everyday, mundane one it must also become more affordable and more environmentally friendly. It was noted during polymer ablation experiments that (under specific conditions) laser ablation of bulk metals appeared to result in the direct deposition of nanostructures on the polymer. Following this discovery, work began to optimise this technique (referred to as Confined Atmospheric Pulsed-laser deposition, or CAP) for reliable, reproducible nanostructure deposition and the application of this new technique in the fabrication of biosensors. Such a technique would allow for the rapid, green, inexpensive fabrication of nanostructured films, potentially resulting in the design of a biosensor offering many advantages of the current cutting-edge in sensor technology at a price suitable for use in a Initial experiments explored the capabilities of the CAP technique, discovering suitable metals, substrates and conditions for deposition. Following this, several studies were performed to optimise the technique and search for correlations between processing parameters and the properties of the resulting films. A series of experiments were then performed to adapt this optimised technique to for the deposition of films suitable for biosensor production, such as the direct deposition of interdigitated electrodes. Once a suitable fabrication method had been found, a brief diversion was made to address a difficulty in the characterisation of some reagents needed for that method. This work resulted in the creation of a new, novel, non-destructive technique for particle enumeration in colloidal suspensions. With the design of the sensor finalised, a number of experiments were then conducted to test the effectiveness of the sensor platform for detecting an example target analyte. These tests resulted in the successful detection of c-Myc exon 2 (a cancer biomarker) and the elucidation of dose-response relationships that enables the developed sensor to be used for quantifying the amount of target present in a sample.
Metadata
Item Type:Thesis (PhD)
Date of Award:March 2020
Refereed:No
Supervisor(s):Brabazon, Dermot, Regan, Fiona and Barron, Niall
Subjects:Computer Science > Algorithms
Computer Science > Computer simulation
Engineering > Microelectronics
Engineering > Biomedical engineering
Medical Sciences > Cancer
Physical Sciences > Analytical chemistry
Physical Sciences > Chemical detectors
Physical Sciences > Lasers
Physical Sciences > Nanotechnology
Mathematics > Mathematical physics
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. View License
Funders:Science Foundation Ireland
ID Code:24090
Deposited On:10 Apr 2020 13:10 by Dermot Brabazon . Last Modified 06 Jan 2024 04:30
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