title: Dielectrophoretic assembly of single gold nanoparticle into nanogap electrodes.
abstract: We report the optimization study of assembling single 20 nm gold nano-particle in 20 nm spaced electrode gap via ac dielectrophoresis (DEP) technique. It was observed that time, voltage, and frequency variations influenced significantly the assembly of gold nano-particle in the nano-gap electrodes. Frequency variation study revealed that at lower frequencies (< 1 MHz) the assembling was observed in low field regions; however, at a moderate frequency of 1 MHz, minimum number of nano-particles was assembled in high field region. Trapping of single 20 nm nano-particle in 20 nm spaced electrodes was successfully achieved under the optimized DEP parameters i.e., frequency, applied voltage and time of values corresponding to 1 MHz, 2 V, and 1 sec, respectively, with the yield of almost 66%. Our results show the promise of optimized dielectrophoresis in the future nano-engineering.
authors.affiliation: School of Information and Communication Engineering and SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746, Korea.
authors.forename: Seok-Hwang
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Yoon
authors.forename: Sanjeev
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: Gil-Ho
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Young-Suk
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: T W
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Saiful I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Khondaker
mesh_terms: D004247:DNA / Q000737:chemistry; D004563:Electrochemistry / Q000379:methods; D004566:Electrodes; D004586:Electrophoresis; D006046:Gold / Q000737:chemistry; D053768:Metal Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry*; D008670:Metals / Q000737:chemistry; D008839:Microelectrodes; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D053758:Nanoparticles / Q000737:chemistry; D036103:Nanotechnology / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D008670:Metals; D006046:Gold; D004247:DNA