Synthesis and assembly of ZnO nanorods grown by ALD for biosensor application

There is great interest in fabrication of semiconducting and piezoelectric nano-scale structures such as nanowires, nanorods and nanotubes. These find applications ranging from sensors to sub-micron electronic devices such as field effect transistors (FET), switches, memory elements, logic arrays and MEMS. In all of these diverse applications nanostructured zinc oxide (ZnO) materials attract broad attention. This ongoing attention is justified by several unique multifunctional properties of ZnO. Moreover, ZnO nanostructures such as quantum dots, wires, belts and nanotubes can be easily fabricated using atomic layer deposition (ALD) over a wide range of templates such as nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO). Our objective in this research is to build a nano-resonator using ZnO nanorods for biosensor applications. The ALD synthesis technique described above results in straight nanorods suitable for assembly. ZnO nanorod bridge structures were recently modeled using FEM technique and the change in the resonant frequency with addition of mass by absorbed biomolecules was analyzed. It has been shown that this structure can be excited as a nano-resonator. This paper demonstrates the suitability of ALD grown nanorods for device fabrication using dielectrophoresis technique.