Date of Award

Summer 2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Computational Analysis and Modeling

First Advisor

Long Que

Abstract

A new fluorescence enhancement technical platform based on nanostructured aluminum oxide (NAO) has been discovered. Experiments reveal that this new platform can enhance the fluorescence signals up to two or three orders of magnitude compared to a traditional glass substrate platform. In order to realize a large-scale arrayed fluorescence biosensing platform for high throughput applications, a rapid and cost-effective process has been developed to fabricate the micropatterned NAO of a variety of shapes. An optical characterization technology, by introducing UV light irradiance, has been found for the first time to determine if the NAO has been formed from Al and the level of NAO formation. This technique is particularly useful for the determination of NAO formed in the Al micropatterns. This UV characterization technology can also be used for the prediction of the defect position of the micropatterned NAO array in NAO-based fluorescence applications. In order to facilitate fast biological analysis, a reconfigurable sample delivery system has been developed and integrated into this platform to realize the automatic generation of different concentrations of biological sample for immunoassay. Given the simple and cost-effective fabrication process of the micropatterned NAO array, this type of nanostructure platform has great potential for applications in integration with microdevices and microfluidic devices for fluorescence-based high throughput biological analysis.

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