Direct Electrical Probing of Rolling Circle Amplification on Surface by Aligned-Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistor

Rolling circle amplification (RCA) of DNA on an aligned-carbon nanotube (a-CNT) surface was electrically interfaced by the a-CNT based filed effect transistor (FET). Since the electric conductance of the a-CNT will be dependent upon its local electric environment, the electric conductance of the FET is expected to give a very distinctive signature of the surface reaction along with this isothermal DNA amplification of the RCA. The a-CNT was initially grown on the quartz wafer with the patterned catalyst by chemical vapor deposition and transferred onto a flexible substrate after the formation of electrodes. After immobilization of a primer DNA, the rolling circle amplification was induced on chip with the a-CNT based FET device. The electric conductance showed a quite rapid increase at the early stage of the surface reaction and then the rate of increase was attenuated to reach a saturated stage of conductance change. It took about an hour to get the conductance saturation from the start of the conductance change. Atomic force microscopy was used as a complementary tool to support the successful amplification of DNA on the device surface. We hope that our results contribute to the efforts in the realization of a reliable nanodevice-based measurement of biologically or clinically important molecules.