The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Particle size dependence on immobilized molecular sensors : assay of nucleic acid probes attached to paramagnetic particles
Author:	Sunny, Celin
View Online:	njit-etd2004-073 (xi, 78 pages ~ 4.9 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Biomedical Engineering
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Biomedical Engineering
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Jaffe, Michael (Committee co-chair) Cubicciotti, Roger (Committee co-chair) Kristol, David S. (Committee member) Soteropoulos, Patricia (Committee member)
Date:	2004-05
Keywords:	Nanotechnology Molecular sensors
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Nanotechnology is concerned with materials and systems whose structure and components exhibit novel and significantly improved physical, chemical and biological properties, phenomena and processes due to their nano scale size. The transition from micro scale to nano scale leads to a number of changes in physical properties, possibly including new physical principles, some of which may be yet to be discovered. One of the major factors in this is the increase in ratio of surface area to volume. This thesis research uses the increase in ratio of surface area to volume property of going from macro to micro to nano scale to pose the hypothesis that the increase in surface area to volume ratio as particle size gets smaller improves the functionality of immobilized molecular sensors. In this thesis work we have successfully immobilized pseudo molecular beacons to paramagnetic particles of different sizes and shapes. The research has surprisingly concluded that the relationship between specific binding capacity and performance as measured by fluorescence binding capacity or performance labeling did not correlate inversely with particle sizes at fixed particle mass as originally postulated.