Shear and AC Field Enhanced Carbon Nanotube Impedance Assay for Rapid, Sensitive, and Mismatch-Discriminating DNA Hybridization

Other than concentrating the target molecules at the sensor location, we demonstrate two distinct new advantages of an open-flow impedance-sensing platform for DNA hybridization on carbon nanotube (CNT) surface in the presence of a high-frequency AC electric field. The shear-enhanced DNA and ion transport rate to the CNT surface decouples the parasitic double-layer AC impedance signal from the charge-transfer signal due to DNA hybridization. The flow field at high AC frequency also amplifies the charge-transfer rate across the hybridized CNT and provides shear-enhanced discrimination between DNA from targeted species and a closely related congeneric species with three nucleotide mismatches out of 26 bases in a targeted attachment region. This allows sensitive detection of hybridization events in less than 20 min with picomolar target DNA concentrations in a label-free CNT-based microfluidic detection platform.