Control of Highly Organized Nanostructures in Microchannels Using Nanoliter Droplets

In this study, we introduce a novel method for control of self-organization of nanoparticles in microchannels using the control of nanoliter droplets and show its useful applications. By controlling capillary force and evaporation process, nanoparticles can be assembled at the desired area and they can be used from nanoporous membranes to biosensor itself. As the biosensor applications, biologically inspired humidity sensor and IgG antibody detector were developed. They can recognize the target materials by the change of visual color without using any fluorescent probe and external electrical power source. These highly organized nanoparticles also induce the unique nanoelectrokinetics, which open new application fields such as such as separation, filtering, accumulation, and analysis of biomolecules, energy generation, and optofluidic system. Among them, we introduce two techniques that are diffuse based chemical gradient generation and sea water desalination.