Lithography-free centimeter-long nanochannel fabrication method using an electrospun nanofiber array

Abstract

Novel cost-effective methods for polymeric and metallic nanochannel fabrication have been demonstrated using an electrospun nanofiber array. Like other electrospun nanofiber-based nanofabrication methods, our system also showed high throughput as well as cost-effective performances. Unlike other systems, however, our fabrication scheme provides a pseudo-parallel nanofiber array a few centimeters long at a speed of several tens of fibers per second based on our unique inclined-gap fiber collecting system. Pseudo-parallel nanofiber arrays were used either directly for the PDMS molding process or for the metal lift-off process followed by the SiO2 deposition process to produce the nanochannel array. While the PDMS molding process was a simple fabrication based on one-step casting, the metal lift-off process followed by SiO2 deposition allowed finetuning on height and width of nanogrooves down to subhundred nanometers from a few micrometers. Nanogrooves were covered either with cover glass or with PDMS slab and nanochannel connectivity was investigated with a fluorescent dye. Also, nanochannel arrays were used to investigate mobility and conformations of lambda-DNA.