Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Nanofluidics

A fork in the nano-road

Nature Nanotechnology volume 2, pages 79–80 (2007)Cite this article

Symmetry is usually prized in nature, but the deliberate skewing of symmetry in nanofluidic devices can lead to elegant new ways of sorting biomolecules.

Separating the components of biological samples is of critical importance in many areas of research and technology. This is not necessarily a straightforward task, however, as samples typically consist of a rich mixture of objects with different sizes, shapes and other properties such as charge. Although there are many ways to sort complex mixtures, those based on size discrimination are perhaps the most simple. Because the mobility of various objects in a given sample will depend on their size, the obvious approach is to make a matrix consisting of some average size pore, inject a slug of the sample and observe the dispersion as it passes through the medium. From gels to capillary electrophoresis, this is the fundamental technology that drives separation techniques.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Relevant articles

Open Access articles citing this article.

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1
Figure 2: The periodic nanofilter array.

References

  1. Fu, J. et al. Nature Nanotech. 2, 121–128 (2007).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Han, J. & Craighead, H. G. Science 288, 1026–1029 (2000).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Duke, T. A. J. & Austin, R. H. Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 1552–1555 (1998).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Huang, L. R. et al. Nature Biotechnol. 20, 1048–1051 (2002).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Huang, L. R. et al. Tech. Dig. Int. Elect. Dev. Mtg. 363–366 (2001).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Robert Austin is at the Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA. austin@princeton.edu,

    Robert Austin

Authors
  1. Robert Austin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Austin, R. A fork in the nano-road. Nature Nanotech 2, 79–80 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2007.18

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2007.18

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Find nanotechnology articles, nanomaterial data and patents all in one place. Visit Nano by Nature Research