Nanosensor Production methods

There are currently several hypothesized ways to produce nanosensors. Top-down lithography is the manner in which most integrated circuits are now made. It involves starting out with a larger block of some material and carving out the desired form. These carved out devices, notably put to use in specific microelectromechanical systems used as microsensors, generally only reach the micro size, but the most recent of these have begun to incorporate nanosized components.

Another way to produce nanosensors is through the bottom-up method, which involves assembling the sensors out of even more minuscule components, most likely individual atoms or molecules. This would involve moving atoms of a particular substance one by one into particular positions which, though it has been achieved in laboratory tests using tools such as atomic force microscopes, is still a significant difficulty, especially to do en masse, both for logistic reasons as well as economic ones. Most likely, this process would be used mainly for building starter molecules for self-assembling sensors.

The third way, which promises far faster results, involves self-assembly, or “growing” particular nanostructures to be used as sensors. This most often entails one of two types of assembly. The first involves using a piece of some previously created or naturally formed nanostructure and immersing it in free atoms of its own kind. After a given period, the structure, having an irregular surface that would make it prone to attracting more molecules as a continuation of its current pattern, would capture some of the free atoms and continue to form more of itself to make larger components of nanosensors.

The second type of self-assembly starts with an already complete set of components that would automatically assemble themselves into a finished product. Though this has been so far successful only in assembling computer chips at the micro size, researchers hope to eventually be able to do it at the nanometer size for multiple products, including nanosensors. Accurately being able to reproduce this effect for a desired sensor in a laboratory would imply that scientists could manufacture nanosensors much more quickly and potentially far more cheaply by letting numerous molecules assemble themselves with little or no outside influence, rather than having to manually assemble each sensor.