title: Shrink-induced silica multiscale structures for enhanced fluorescence from DNA microarrays.
abstract: We describe a manufacturable and scalable method for fabrication of multiscale wrinkled silica (SiO2) structures on shrink-wrap film to enhance fluorescence signals in DNA fluorescence microarrays. We are able to enhance the fluorescence signal of hybridized DNA by more than 120 fold relative to a planar glass slide. Notably, our substrate has improved detection sensitivity (280 pM) relative to planar glass slide (11 nM). Furthermore, this is accompanied by a 30-45 times improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Unlike metal enhanced fluorescence (MEF) based enhancements, this is a far-field and uniform effect based on surface concentration and photophysical effects from the nano- to microscale SiO2 structures. Notably, the photophysical effects contribute an almost 2.5 fold enhancement over the concentration effects alone. Therefore, this simple and robust method offers an efficient technique to enhance the detection capabilities of fluorescence based DNA microarrays.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, ‡Department of Chemistry, and §Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine , Irvine, California 92697, United States.
authors.forename: Himanshu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: Jennifer B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Wood
authors.forename: Sophia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Robert M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Corn
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Khine
mesh_terms: D005453:Fluorescence; D015394:Molecular Structure; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D010316:Particle Size; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry*; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D012822:Silicon Dioxide