Elena Angeli
Univerisity of Genova, Italy
Title: Polymeric nanochannels for studing DNA and for counting natural and engineered nanoparticles
Biography
Biography: Elena Angeli
Abstract
Single and multiple nanochannels’ devices are powerful tools whose exploitation covers various field of application. Slightly modifying the characteristics of a basic structure like a nanochannel, it is possible to investigate a variety of different phenomena: conformational change in biopolymers, nanoparticles’ translocation processes. For example: devices with multiple nanochannels can be used for stretching long DNA moleucles for bar coding applications , while nanochannels interrupted by series of deep regions can be used as entropic traps for studying the dynamics conformational changes in biopolymers. Devices with short single channels are used for counting and sizing nanoparticles one-by-one exploting an electro-optical tracking method recently developed by our laboratory. This technique is based on the simultaneous acquisition of electrical traces and optical tracks of nanoparticles crossing the nanochannel. This multimodal analysis approach greatly increases the reliability of these sensors, compared to conventional monomodal approaches, in counting and sizing nanoparticles of different nature. The versatility of these nanodevices makes them very valuable tools for several areas of Nanotechnology