Radadia

Bio-Nanomaterials Interface Design and Applications Laboratory (BIDAL)

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Our lab builds micro- and nano fabricated sensors to interface with biology at various scales and address challenges in diagnostics, therapeutics, bioelectronics, and fundamental biology. Current tools lack the ideal biology-materials interface that is chemically and mechanically suitable for such applications. Our work bio-functionalizes carbon nano materials, mainly nano diamonds and graphene, and evaluates the stability and interactions of biomolecules at such interfaces. These nanoscale interface are designed and characterized using techniques in surface chemistry, micro and nanofabrication, and materials characterization. Immunoassays for the detection of bacterial pathogens rely on the selectivity and stability of biorecognition elements, such as antibodies tethered to sensor surfaces. We show that covalent linking of antibodies to diamond surfaces leads to substantial improvements in the biological activity of proteins. The results can be easily extended to the functionalization of micro- and nanodi-mensional sensors and structures of biomedical diagnostic and therapeutic interest. An application that requires hydrolytic stability of surface chemistry includes selective capture of mammalian cells on microcantilevers and subsequent lysis of mammalian cell. For this we constructed a diamond-coated silicon heated micro cantilever. The mammalian cells were first captured on the cantilever using surface tethered antibodies (Left), followed by lysis by heating the embedded silicon heater in the microcantilever.(Right)