Electrochemical Biosensors Based on Functionalized Zinc Oxide Nanorods

The semi-conductor zinc oxide (ZnO), a representative of group II-VI has gained substantial interest in the research community due to its novel properties and characteristics. ZnO a direct band gap (3.4eV) semi-conductor has a stable wurtzite structure. Recently ZnO have attracted much interest because of its unique piezoelectric, semiconducting, catalytic properties and being biosafe and biocompatible morphology combined with the easiness of growth. This implies that ZnO has a wide range of applications in optoelectronics, sensors, transducers, energy conversion and medical sciences. This thesis relates specifically to biosensor technology and pertains more particularly to novel biosensors based on multifunctional ZnO nanorods for biological, biochemical and chemical applications. The nanoscale science and engineering have found great promise in the fabrication of novel nano-biosensors with faster response and higher sensitivity than of planar sensor configurations. This thesis aims to highlight recent developments in materials and techniques for electrochemical biosensing, design, operation and fabrication. Rapid research growths in biomaterials, especially the availability and applications of a vast range of polymers and copolymers associated with new sensing techniques have led to remarkable innovation in the design and fabrication of biosensors. Specially nanowires/nanorods and due to their small dimensions combined with dramatically increased contact surface and strong binding with biological and chemical reagents will have important applications in biological and biochemical research. The diameter of these nanostructures is usually comparable to the size of the biological and chemical species being sensed, which intuitively makes them represent excellent primary transducers for producing electrical signals. ZnO nanostructures have unique advantages including high surface to volume ratio, nontoxicity, chemical stability, electrochemical activity, and high electron communication features. In addition, ZnO can be grown as vertical nanorods and has high ionic bonding (60%), and they are not very soluble at biological pH-values. All these facts open up for possible sensitive extra/intracellular ion measurements. New developments in biosensor design are appearing at a high rate as these devices play increasingly important roles in daily life. In this thesis we have studied calcium ion