ABSTRACT. Short carbon nanotubes have been modified selectively on one end with metal using a bulk technique based on bipolar electrochemistry. A stabilized suspension of nanotubes is introduced in a capillary containing an aqueous metal salt solution, and a high electric field is applied to orientate and polarize the individual tubes. During their transport through the capillary under sufficient polarization (30 kV), each nanotube is the site of water oxidation on one end and the site of metal ion reduction on the other end with the size of the formed metal cluster being proportional to the potential drop along the nanotube.

Ore 16 : Using electrochemical SERS to discriminate mutations in DNA

Relatore: Prof. Phil Bartlett, School of Chemistry, University of Southampton, UK

ABSTRACT. In this lecture I will describe the work we have done over the last five years on the properties of metal surfaces, sculpted on the wavelength of light. These “metamaterials” are made using simple, easy to implement fabrication methods yet because of their shape they interact strongly with visible light showing strong structural colour as well as unusual magnetic, superconducting and wetting properties. In each case these effects arise because the length scale of the structure matches the characteristic physical length scale for the phenomenon – the wavelength of light, the magnetic domain wall width or the superconducting coherence length. Now that we begin to understand the interaction of light with these surfaces we are able to start to control and exploit the optical effects to make highly sensitive chemical and biochemical sensors. In my lecture I will describe how we use these surfaces to detect and characterise trace quantities, potentially down to a few thousand molecules, of DNA and how we might use this to produce simple DNA diagnostic devices for different genetic diseases.