Recent advance in nanotechnology has led to rapid advances in nanofluidics, which has been established as areliable means for a wide variety of applications, including molecular separation, detection, crystallization andbiosynthesis. Although atomic and molecular level consideration is a key ingredient in experimental design andfabrication of nanfluidic systems, atomic and molecular...

In this paper a new model is described for calculating the electric potential field in a long, thin nanochannel with overlapped electric double layers. Electrolyte concentration in the nanochannel is predicted self-consistently via equilibrium between ionic solution in the wells and within the nanochannel. Differently than published models that require detailed iterative numerical solutions of ...

The rarefied flow of nitrogen with speed ratio ͑mean speed over most probable speed͒ of S =2,5,10, pressure of 10.132 kPa into rectangular nanochannels with height of 100, 500, and 1000 nm is investigated using a three-dimensional, unstructured, direct simulation Monte Carlo method. The parametric computational investigation considers rarefaction effects with Knudsen number Kn= 0.481, 0.962, 4.81...

Development of all polymer-based nanofluidic devices using replication technologies, which is a prerequisite for providing devices for a larger user base, is hampered by undesired substrate deformation associated with the replication of multi-scale structures. Therefore, most nanofluidic devices have been fabricated in glass-like substrates or in a polymer resist layer coated on a substrate. Th...

A direct fabrication method capable of producing fully-reversible, tunable nanochannel arrays, without the use of a molding step, is described. It is based on tunnel cracking of a readily-prepared brittle layer constrained between elastomeric substrates. The resulting nanochannels have adjustable cross-sections that can be reversibly opened, closed, widened and narrowed merely by applying and r...

We simulated the translocation process of a polymer chain from a source container to a drain container through a short nanochannel. We utilized the bond fluctuation model coupled with Monte Carlo dynamics in our simulations. The calculation results show that the excluded volume effect significantly affects the polymer's translocation time tau. This time depends nonmonotonically on the polymer l...

Submitted for the SES07 Meeting of The American Physical Society Numerical modeling of single-molecule detection and trapping in a nanochannel WILLIAM ROBINSON, ZBIGNIEW SIKORSKI, LLOYD M. DAVIS, UTSI — Confocal fluorescence microscopy with single-photon counting enables detection of individual fluorescent molecules as they randomly diffuse through a tightly focused laser beam. However, for man...

Synthetic molecular motors typically take nanometer-scale steps through rectification of thermal motion. Here we propose Inchworm, a DNA-based motor that employs a pronounced power stroke to take micrometer-scale steps on a time scale of seconds, and we design, fabricate, and analyze the nanofluidic device needed to operate the motor. Inchworm is a kbp-long, double-stranded DNA confined inside ...

The single conical nanochannel investigated here was produced in polymer films using the ion track-etching technique. [S1] Before the chemical etching process, the samples of PET were exposed to the UV light for 1 h from each side. To produce a conical nanochannel, etching was performed only from one side, the other side of the cell contains a solution that is able to neutralize the etchant as ...