OPTICAL NANOWIRE BIOSENSOR BASED ON ENERGY TRANSFER

摘要

The present invention relates to the use of the optical properties of nanowires ( 1 ) for biomolecule ( 2 ) detection. The advantages of using nanowires ( 1 ) are a high specific surface area ( 1 a) to bind receptor molecules ( 3 ) and size dependent optical properties because of strong quantum confinement of the carriers, i.e. nanowires ( 1 ) with different diameters show different colours. The proposed transduction mechanism is based on energy transfer between the biomolecule ( 2 ) and the nanowire ( 1 ) (or vice versa). Preferably, the target biomolecule ( 2 ) is a luminescent biomolecule ( 2 ), or said biomolecule ( 2 ) is labelled with a dye for quenching of the luminescence of the nanowire ( 1 ).