Charge-selective gate of arrayed MWCNTs for ultra high-efficient biomolecule enrichment by nano-electrostatic sieving (NES)

We report a rapid and highly-efficient biomolecule preconcentrating device based on nano-electrostatic sieving (NES) mechanism that is facilitated by multi-nanofluidic channels operated in parallel. The opening of these nanochannels is regulated by tunable charges that are generated on arrayed multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) gate. The NES device is fabricated by standard photolithography and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) techniques, followed by subsequent deposition of parylene (poly(p-xylylene))-C on vertically grown MWCNTs in order to obtain arrayed multi-nanochannels with mean pore sizes that are comparable to the thickness of an electrical double layer (EDL). The enrichment efficiency for charged analytes is dependent on electrostatic repulsion, which is regulated by the distribution of the local electric field on the MWCNTs gate. The NES device exhibits polarity selectivity on the analytes and performs efficient collection and separation of biomolecules by probing the surface charge density dependence on the applied gate field. A tunable gate of the parylene-MWCNT nanochannels was used as size sieving devices for nano-scale biomolecules. The experimental results for the collection of FITC-labeled bovine serum albumin (BSA, 0.033 nM) were as high as nearly 106 fold after only 45 min. These data are attributed to the in-parallel molecule sieving process as conducted by the many nanochannels formed among the MWCNTs. This device allows uncharged polar molecules, such as water, to rapidly pass through thus enable highly efficient bio-molecule concentration for the application to ultra-high sensitive biosensing.

► Multi-nanochannel devices are constructed by multi-walled carbon nanotubes array.
► A tunable gate of the parylene-MWCNT nanochannels was used as size sieving devices.
► Enrichment efficiency for charged analytes is dependent on electrostatic repulsion.
► We proposed a MWCNTs-NES device to preconcentrate and separate charged proteins.