Mesoscopic concentration fluctuations in a fluidic nanocavity detected by redox cycling

Marcel A G Zevenbergen; Diego Krapf; Marc R Zuiddam; Serge G Lemay

doi:10.1021/nl062571g

Mesoscopic concentration fluctuations in a fluidic nanocavity detected by redox cycling

Nano Lett. 2007 Feb;7(2):384-8. doi: 10.1021/nl062571g.

Authors

Marcel A G Zevenbergen¹, Diego Krapf, Marc R Zuiddam, Serge G Lemay

Affiliation

¹ Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Section Molecular Biophysics, Delft University of Technology, Lorentzweg 1, 2628 CJ Delft, the Netherlands.

PMID: 17298005
DOI: 10.1021/nl062571g

Abstract

We show that a nanofluidic device consisting of a solution-filled cavity bounded by two closely spaced parallel electrodes can amplify the electrical current from redox molecules inside the cavity by a factor of approximately 400 through redox cycling. The noise spectral density of this signal agrees quantitatively with the calculated fluctuations in the number of molecules inside the cavity due to their diffusive motion. We demonstrate sensitivity to fluctuations of as few as approximately 70 molecules.