Most medical diagnostic tests are expensive, involve slow turnaround times from centralized laboratories and require highly specialized equipment with seasoned technicians to carry out the assay. To facilitate realization of precision medicine at the point of care, we have developed a mixed-scale nanosensor chip featuring high surface area pillar arrays where solid-phase reactions can be performed to detect and identify nucleic acid targets found in diseased patients. Products formed can be identified and detected using a polymer nanofluidic channel. To guide delivery of this platform, we discuss the operation of various components of the device and simulations (COMSOL) used to guide the design by investigating parameters such as pillar array loading, and hydrodynamic and electrokinetic flows. The fabrication of the nanosensor is discussed, which was performed using a silicon (Si) master patterned with a combination of focused ion beam milling and photolithography with deep reactive ion etching. The mixed-scale patterns were transferred into a thermoplastic via thermal nanoimprint lithography, which facilitated fabrication of the nanosensor chip making it appropriate for in vitro diagnostics. The results from COMSOL were experimentally verified for hydrodynamic flow using Rhodamine B as a fluorescent tracer and electrokinetic flow using single fluorescently labelled oligonucleotides (single-stranded DNAs, ssDNAs).

The objective of the present study is to explore pressure-driven flows with the presence of electric double layer (EDL) in nanochannels of various wall lattice planes. Three face-centered cubic (fcc) lattice planes, i.e. fcc(111), fcc(100), and fcc(110), of the channel wall are considered. The structure of diffuse EDL and electrokinetic flow characteristics are dealt with in an atomistic view. Fluid and charge density layering phenomena and their influences on the Stern layer are investigated with the molecular dynamic simulation results. In most of the simulations, a monatomic molecule, W, is used as the solvent model and the charged particles W+ and W− of the same size as the ions. To examine behaviors of the dissimilar particles, a simulation with the aqueous model W for fluid, Na+ for cation and Cl− for anion is also performed. Effects of ion concentrations, wall-fluid interaction energy, and surface charge density on the electro-hydrodynamics are studied. In addition, based on the continuum theory, two analytic expressions for zeta potential with the presence of fluid slippage are derived and analyzed. The present results disclose interesting physics about the influences of wall lattice-fluid interactions, which are significant in further understanding and applications of the nanoscale electrokinetic flows.