Self-Assembly Of Nanoporous Structure On The Tip Of A Glass Nanopipette:Properties And Applications In Single Cell Analysis

Cells are the basic unite of life and all biological functions.To understand the biological structure and functions within a system,a detailed study on cell is required.Usually,a lot of cells are analyzed in order to extract chemical information.However,such study can only obtain averaged data which suffer many limitations and disadvantages.For example,the distribution of cell in tissues is not constant and the difference between each single cell is sometimes distinct.Therefore,statistical analysis is applied on particular population of cells that extensively used in fields of medicine,biochemistry,biology and biophysics.Single cell based study can give more detailed information about a specific cell.Moreover,single cell analysis can also help to diagnose the early stage disorders and thus help to cure at preliminary stage of the complicated diseases such as cancer and also effective in disease prognosis erudition.In order to extract molecular information from the micro space of single cell,micro/nano scale probes that can collect,enhance and convert the molecular information into photonic and electrical signal are required.In this thesis,we fabricated gold nanoporous spherical structure based on self-assembly of gold nanoparticles at the tip of a glass nanopipette.We then electrochemically polymerized poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)(PEDOT)on the structure and studied the Raman spectrum of the complex structure.The application of such structure in analysis of single plant cell is also explored.In present study single cell based study is done that is divided into four major sections:The first section,emphasized on the importance of single cell based analysis by Raman spectroscopy.Besides,we used the dual approach of a conductive polymer material for electrochemistry and for electrochemical behavior in Raman spectroscopy in cell study.The second section described the fabrication of gold self-assembly of small size gold nanoparticles on the tip of glass nanopipette by using di-thiol as linker molecule.At the same time different electrochemical behavior of this self-assembled gold nano structure were studied after modification with PEDOT.The third section defined the application of smooth gold nano-assembly on nano tip after modification with PEDOT as microprobe for detection of small molecules by Raman spectroscopy within a single cell.The last section described the detection of apoptotic behavior of cell by using single nanoparticle based localized surface plasmon resonance(LSPR).