J. F. da Silva*, V. Bacheva, S. Reidt, U. Drechsler, P. M. Nicollier, A. Knoll, H. Wolf
IBM Research Europe– Zurich, Rüschlikon, Switzerland
Samuel Bisig
Heidelberg Instruments Nano, Zürich, Switzerland
M. Stauffer, D.Fotiadis
University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
*jfi@zurich.ibm.com

The active manipulation of the flux of protons by controlling their gradient is important to provide spatiotemporal control over Chemical Reaction Networks (CRNs). Purple membranes (PMs) are composed of protein bacteriorhodopsin (bR), which acts as a light-driven cross-membrane proton pump [1]. In this research, we plan to use nanochannels combined with bR deposition to fuel a proton-catalyzed directed molecular self-assembly [2]. The nanochannel fabrication and their respective filling in our substrate are critical for the demonstration and scale-up of the proton transport produced by bR. The channels were fabricated in a Si/SiO2/Al2O3 substrate using thermal Scanning Probe Lithography (t-SPL) and Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) [3]. A second round of fabrication was performed on the substrate for the design of bR traps on the channels by t-SPL. Photolithography was used to define larger microfluidic channels for nanochannel filling. As a final step we perform localized deposition of PMs on a Tunable Nanofludic Confinement Apparatus (TNCA).
[1] Stoeckenius et al. Biochim. Biophys. Acta BBA-Rev. Bioenerg., vol. 505, no. 3–4, pp. 215–278, 1979.
[2] J. Boekhoven et al. Angew. Chem., vol. 122, no. 28, pp. 4935–4938, 2010.
[3] S.-W. Nam et al. Nano Lett., vol. 10, no. 9, pp. 3324–3329, 2010.