Boron Nitride Nanotube as a Nano-mechanical Biosensor: A Computational Approach

Mitesh B. Panchal^*

Department Mechanical Engineering, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India

Corresponding Author:

Panchal MB
Department Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Technology
Nirma University, Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Hwy
Ahmedabad 382481, Gujarat, India
Tel: +91-079-30642242
E-mail: mitesh.panchal@nirmauni.ac.in

Received Date: May 21, 2015 Accepted Date: July 30, 2015 Published Date: August 01, 2015

Citation: Panchal MB (2015) Boron Nitride Nanotube as a Nano-mechanical Biosensor: A Computational Approach. Biosens J 4:118. doi:10.4172/2090-4967.1000118

Copyright: © 2015 Panchal MB. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Short Communication

The nanostructures based biosensors are increasingly in demanded for fundamental biological studied, health conditioning, drug delivery and clinical diagnosis [1-3]. Based on the nature of the transduction signal, biosensors can be classified into optical, electrical and mechanical [4]. In mechanical biosensors, the resonance frequency is measured and related to estimate the mass change due to the binding of the additional element on the sensor surface. Nanomechanical biosensor is a subclass of mechanical biosensors, which is having size of nanoscale at least in one of their dimensions [5,6].

The nanostructures based biosensors are increasingly in demanded for fundamental biological studied, health conditioning, drug delivery and clinical diagnosis [1-3]. Based on the nature of the transduction signal, biosensors can be classified into optical, electrical and mechanical [4]. In mechanical biosensors, the resonance frequency is measured and related to estimate the mass change due to the binding of the additional element on the sensor surface. Nanomechanical biosensor is a subclass of mechanical biosensors, which is having size of nanoscale at least in one of their dimensions [5,6].

The higher value of Young's modulus (similar to the CNTs) of BNNTs make them superior chemically and thermally stable materials [9]. The excellent piezoelectric properties make them superior to those of piezoelectric polymers [9]. Such properties furnish BNNT as a potential material for a wide range of applications in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology [10-12] (Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 1: (a) Schematic of biosensor and biosensor subclasses, and (b) chronogram of the publication rate in optical, electrical and nanomechanical biosensors.

Figure 2: Resonant frequency shift Δf due to attached mass at the tip of the nanotube of cantilevered configuration of nanotube.

Figure 3: Molecular structural mechanics based finite element (FE) model of single walled BNNT.

The resonant frequency variation based analysis suggests the possible mass sensitivity limit of 10^-8 fg can be achieved using BNNT as nanoresonators [10,12,13]. The molecular structural mechanics based simulation approach can be effectively utilized to model the different atomistic finite element (FE) model BNNTs like, zigzag, armchair, chiral, pristine and defective [11,14-17].

The resonant behavior of almost all types of possible atomic structures of nanotubes suggests, the possible detection of masses of nano-scale level like acetone molecules, biological objects like DNA components, bacterium/viruses, etc. [17-19]. The structural molecular mechanics based resonant frequency based analysis may be useful to practically realize the future BNNT based biosensor systems for the real time detection of biological objects and chemical molecules for the future health monitoring. Also, using multiphysics approach, a more robust sensor systems using BNNTs can be proposed to incorporate the piezoelectric properties along with their vibrational characteristics.

The binding energy of the different biological objects or the chemical molecules of nano-scale mass can be enhanced using dopants in the base atomic structure of the BNNTs to enhance the capabilities of BNNT based biosensor systems.

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