Abstract

Glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique is a physical vapor deposition method to design three-dimensional nanostructures by programming the vapor incident angle and substrate azimuthal rotation. This method offers large area growth of aligned nanorod arrays with additional capability of self-alignment. There is almost no limitation on materials that can be fabricated into desired nanostructures. With recent advance in a multilayer deposition procedure, one can design complex and multifunctional heterogeneous nanostructures. In addition, with a co-deposition system of two or more sources, novel nanocomposites or doped nanostructure arrays can be produced, which results in nanostructures with different morphology. Here, I will highlight our recent progress in multi-component nanorod array fabrication and their potential biological applications. We find that aligned silver nanorod array substrates can be used as a high sensitive virus and bacteria sensor base on surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) principle. This SERS based sensor can be used to detect the molecular fingerprints of several important human respiratory viruses including respiratory syncytial virus, rhinovirus, adenovirus, human immunodeficiency virus, influenza virus, and bacteria, with high sensitivity and selectivity, and to discriminate between different virus/bacterium strains. Using a unique multilayer deposition configuration, catalytically driven nanomotors have been fabricated and demonstrated, which can directly convert chemical energy into mechanical energy. This device holds a great potential to mimic smart biological systems via hybrid organic-inorganic nanostructures.