Dual Nanoprobe for Single Cell Viability Detection: Method Characterization

This paper presents characterization results of the dual nanoprobe technique for single cell viability detection. Characterization is one of the steps in improving single cell viability detection technique in term of dual nanoprobe sensitivity, design and measurement configuration. The characterizations were focused on improving dual nanoprobe sensitivity and design by studying the effect of different material types, cross sections and measurement configuration, i.e. penetration depth and the gap of the dual nanoprobe on the measurement result. From the findings, the most preferred material is Tungsten and different cross section shapes do not give significant differences in dual nanoprobe sensitivity. It was also found that the current flow increases significantly with deeper penetration depth and narrower probes gap. Therefore, penetration depth and gap need to be constant during measurement in order to get reliable single cell viability detection result. The dual nanoprobe also has the potential to be used in single cell surgery, single cell thermal measurement, single cell drug delivery, and early disease detection applications.