Growth and Structure of ZnO Nanorods on a Sub-Micrometer Glass Pipette and Their Application as Intracellular Potentiometric Selective Ion Sensors

Materials

Muhammad H. Asif¹  Omer Nur¹  Magnus Willander¹  Peter Strålfors²  Cecilia Brännmark²  Fredrik Elinder²  Ulrika H. Englund²  Jun Lu³ 

[1] Department of Science and Technology, Campus Norrköping, Linköping University, SE-60174 Norrköping Sweden; E-Mails:;Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Division of Cell Biology, Linköping University, SE-58185 Linköping, Sweden; E-Mails:;Department of Physics (IFM), Linkoping University, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden; E-Mails:

关键词: ZnO nanorods;    HRTEM;    functionalization;    membrane;    intracellular sensor;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ma3094657

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

This paper presents the growth and structure of ZnO nanorods on a sub-micrometer glass pipette and their application as an intracellular selective ion sensor. Highly oriented, vertical and aligned ZnO nanorods were grown on the tip of a borosilicate glass capillary (0.7 µm in diameter) by the low temperature aqueous chemical growth (ACG) technique. The relatively large surface-to-volume ratio of ZnO nanorods makes them attractive for electrochemical sensing. Transmission electron microscopy studies show that ZnO nanorods are single crystals and grow along the crystal’s c-axis. The ZnO nanorods were functionalized with a polymeric membrane for selective intracellular measurements of Na⁺. The membrane-coated ZnO nanorods exhibited a Na⁺-dependent electrochemical potential difference versus an Ag/AgCl reference micro-electrode within a wide concentration range from 0.5 mM to 100 mM. The fabrication of functionalized ZnO nanorods paves the way to sense a wide range of biochemical species at the intracellular level.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2010 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.