Nanoscale Electrodes for Bionanosensing

Cancer is globally the second most common cause of death. Cancer burden rises to about 10 million deaths and more than 18 million new cases in 2018. Cancers are often diagnosed at a later stage preventing curative treatment. This underscores the need for an early stage diagnosis of cancer. Consequently, screening methods that can test patients’ samples taken by less invasive methods capable of early stage diagnosis are highly sought for. Based on this motivation, here we developed lab-on-a-chip diagnostic systems that can be used for early detection of cancer. Three different types of nanoscale electrodes were fabricated: (i) nanogap electrodes (ii) nano interdigitated electrodes and (iii) nanodisc electrodes and the possibility of using them for sensing and signal transduction were investigated. Chapter 2 describes the fabrication of nanogap device using conventional optical lithography and DNA detection across it using the electrical method. Chapter 3 details the fabrication of nano interdigitated electrodes (nIDEs) and their electrochemical validation. Chapter 4 describes the biosensing application of nIDEs using nanoparticle sandwich assay for the detection of DNA molecules. Chapter 5 describes the capturing of tdEVs on nIDEs, and its quantification using a sandwich immunosorbent assay on nIDEs. Chapter 6 proposes a new type of nanoscale electrodes which are termed as nanodisc electrodes. Chapter 7 explores the possibility of developing the nanodisc technology to a business idea. In short, the whole thesis tries to explore the different possibilities in developing a sensor that can be useful for cancer diagnosis.