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Lipid multilayer gratings

Nature Nanotechnology volume 5, pages 275–279 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

The interaction of electromagnetic waves with matter can be controlled by structuring the matter on the scale of the wavelength of light, and various photonic components have been made by structuring materials using top-down or bottom-up approaches1,2,3,4,5. Dip-pen nanolithography is a scanning-probe-based fabrication technique that can be used to deposit materials on surfaces with high resolution and, when carried out in parallel, with high throughput6,7,8. Here, we show that lyotropic optical diffraction gratings—composed of biofunctional lipid multilayers with controllable heights between ∼5 and 100 nm—can be fabricated by lipid dip-pen nanolithography. Multiple materials can be simultaneously written into arbitrary patterns on pre-structured surfaces to generate complex structures and devices, allowing nanostructures to be interfaced by combinations of top-down and bottom-up fabrication methods. We also show that fluid and biocompatible lipid multilayer gratings allow label-free and specific detection of lipid–protein interactions in solution. This biosensing capability takes advantage of the adhesion properties of the phospholipid superstructures and the changes in the size and shape of the grating elements that take place in response to analyte binding.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the technique used to fabricate lipid multilayer gratings.
Figure 2: Optical and topographical characterization of the gratings.
Figure 3: Bottom-up and top-down integration of multimaterial waveguide grating couplers.
Figure 4: Lipid nanodynamics and protein detection.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank W. Schroeder for drawing Fig. 1, T. Heiler for Fig. 3a, and A.B. Thistle for editorial review. S.L. thanks S. Gaertner, M. Ruben and L.F. Chi for discussion. S.L. and H.F. thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation, project FU 299/14-1) for financial support. S.S. and S.L. acknowledge funding from the DFG Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN E3.2). T.M.'s Young Investigator Group YIG 08 received financial support from the ‘Concept for the Future’ of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology within the framework of the German Excellence Initiative. C.V. and S.K. acknowledge financial support from the Karlsruhe School of Optics and Photonics.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, 76021, Germany

    Steven Lenhert, Falko Brinkmann, Thomas Laue, Stefan Walheim, Miao Xu, Sylwia Sekula, Thomas Schimmel & Harald Fuchs

  2. Physikalisches Institut, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, and Center for Nanotechnology (CeNTech), Münster, 48149, Germany

    Steven Lenhert, Falko Brinkmann & Harald Fuchs

  3. Department of Biological Science and Integrative NanoScience Institute, Florida State University, Tallahassee, 32306-4370, Florida, USA

    Steven Lenhert

  4. Institute of Applied Physics, Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, 76128, Germany

    Stefan Walheim & Thomas Schimmel

  5. Institut für Mikrostrukturtechnik, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, 76128, Germany

    Christoph Vannahme & Timo Mappes

  6. Light Technology Institute, and Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, 76128, Germany

    Soenke Klinkhammer

  7. Department of Nanobio Materials and Electronics, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju, Korea

    Harald Fuchs

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  1. Steven Lenhert
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Contributions

S.L. conceived the study, coordinated experiments and wrote the paper. F.B. carried out the initial DPN and characterization, and T.L. advanced the sensing experiments with contributions from S.L., S.W., M.X. and S.S. The grating coupler was developed by C.V., S.K. and T. M. T.S. and H.F. contributed significantly to the scientific discussion of the project.

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Correspondence to Steven Lenhert.

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Lenhert, S., Brinkmann, F., Laue, T. et al. Lipid multilayer gratings. Nature Nanotech 5, 275–279 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2010.17

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