Bottom-up manufacturing techniques may hold the key in the production of tiny medical devices capable of testing for multiple molecules like viruses or cancer makers, it has been claimed.

According to a team of Penn State researchers, using the bottom-up method makes manufacturing more flexible.

Describing their work in the current issue of Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers said they fabricated proof-of-concept chips with nanowires made of single crystal silicon or polycrystalline rhodium at one end and suspended over a depression.

The device is able to target molecules when they bind to the probe molecules on the nanowires and change the wire's vibration.

Many silicon and rhodium nanoresonators were tested by measuring their vibration at high vacuum and the researchers found that electroplated anchors were uniform and did not show high energy losses.

"Bottom-up fabrication is an entirely new nanomanufacturing approach and we need to create devices that have properties that match what we can now make using top-down fabrication," said Theresa Mayer, Professoer of Electrical Engineering told Penn State Live.

Source:

Tiny wire assembly technique may help detect cancer and other diseases, 07/03/08
http://live.psu.edu/story/29281

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