Philippe M. Nicollier, Christian Schwemmer, et al.
SPIE Nanoscience + Engineering 2021
We present a nanoparticle size-separation device based on a nanofluidic rocking Brownian motor. It features a ratchet-shaped electrostatic particle potential with increasing barrier heights along the particle transport direction. The sharp drop of the particle current with barrier height is exploited to separate a particle suspension into multiple subpopulations. By solving the Fokker-Planck equation, we show that the physics of the separation mechanism is governed by the energy landscape under forward tilt of the ratchet. For a given device geometry and sorting duration, the applied force is thus the only tunable parameter to increase the separation resolution. For the experimental conditions of 3.5 V applied voltage and 20 s sorting, we predict a separation resolution of approximately 2 nm, supported by experimental data for separating spherical gold particles of nominal diameters of 80 and 100 nm.
Philippe M. Nicollier, Christian Schwemmer, et al.
SPIE Nanoscience + Engineering 2021
Philippe M. Nicollier, Aaron D. Ratschow, et al.
Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
Heiko Wolf, Yu Kyoung Ryu, et al.
Pan Pacific 2019
Philippe M. Nicollier, Christian Schwemmer, et al.
SPIE Nanoscience + Engineering 2021