Development of Alternating Current Resistive Pulse Sensing Using Transport-Induced-Charge Theory

2020 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 19K15600
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 34020:Analytical chemistry-related
• Research Institution: The University of Tokyo
• Principal Investigator: HSU Wei-Lun 東京大学, 大学院工学系研究科(工学部), 講師 (50771549)
• Project Period (FY): 2019-04-01 – 2021-03-31
• Keywords: Nanopore sensing / Nanofluidics / Electrokinetics / Electroosmosis / Joule heating

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Nanopore sensing has drawn attention in various fields, owing to its short processing time, ease of implementation, and ability to operate with limited sample volumes, paving the way toward high-precision medical diagnosis for various diseases. Albeit both direct current and alternating current systems have been used for electroosmotic pumping, direct current electroosmotic pumping suffers from notorious issues of bubble formation, electrode degradation, hydrodynamic instability, etc. originating from the redox reactions at electrodes. Thus, we develop alternative current electrokinetic pumping using transport-induced-charge (TIC) phenomena and investigate thermal effects in nanopore systems. Our results show that the rise of local temperature inside the nanopore significantly enhances TIC effects and thus has a significant influence on electroosmotic behavior. The results improve our knowledge of　nonclassical electrokinetic phenomena for flow control in nanopore systems.

Free Research Field

Thermal Engineering

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

The Covid-19 pandemic has urgently increased the demand for high accuracy and throughout medical diagnostic methods. Our results have demonstrated that it is promising to control the flow within nanopore systems by thermal management for alternating current pumping and resistive pulse sensing.