Department Mechanical Engineering
Principal investigator Sabrina Caneva
E-mail address s.caneva@tudelft.nl
Website https://www.canevalab.com/
Temperature-modulated single-molecule adsorption on 2D materials for reusable biomolecule sensor chips
Suitable as a BEP? Yes
Suitable as a MEP? Yes
Suitable as an Academic Research Project? No
Techniques:
- Single-molecule fluorescence imaging
- 2D material exfoliation and optical imaging
- ssDNA-fluorophore sample preparation
- Image analysis (e.g. particle tracking in ImageJ)
Biosensors are crucial for early disease detection. Sensors that can detect specific DNA (e.g. DNA derived from tumors) could be a game changer in personalized diagnostics applications. We are developing DNA sensors based on 2D material chips that can bind DNA molecules on their surface. Advanced fluorescence microscopy allows the detection of individual DNA molecules and their properties. However, such sensors are not durable and each chip can be used for DNA capture only once due to surface fouling. This makes biosensing expensive and time-consuming.
What if we could clean the surface in-situ with a precise heating step? Controlling the chip surface temperature could change the 2D material-DNA interaction and result in DNA unbinding from the sensor surface. In this way, the chip can be cleaned and reused again, making it a long-lasting, high-yield and low-cost DNA sensor. However, commercial heating stages for fluorescence microscopy are very expensive and not compatible with 2D material chips (VaHeat systems).
In this project you will tackle the challenge of controlling the binding of DNA to 2D materials by answering the following questions:
• How can we design a simple, low-cost and precise temperature controller, using off-the-shelf components, to reversibly control the binding of DNA to 2D materials?
• What are the effects of temperature on DNA-2D material interactions?
Further reading (click to link to article)
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.4c16277
Meta-surface polarizer for single-molecule detection
Suitable as a BEP? No
Suitable as a MEP? Yes
Suitable as an Academic Research Project? No
Techniques:
- Nanofabrication
- AFM
- Single molecule imaging
Chirality is a widespread in biomolecules, in which two chiral forms of molecules with mirror images present distinct biological functions. Polarization of light has been regarded as a key method for probing the chirality of biomolecules. Traditional polarimeter required multiple measurement utilizing rotating bulky polarizer. In this project, we propose to replace bulky polarizer with metasurfaces, which hold two advantages: 1) Polarization of different orientations are obtained simultaneously without moving components; 2) Ultra-compact size due to 2D dimensions of metasurfaces. The results can be broadly applied to improve the sensitivity of single molecules detection in a portable manner.