About the Presenter:

Dr. Hung Chang received his Ph.D. from Dr. Rashid Bashir’s lab in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Purdue University. After his Ph.D. study, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering in Arizona State University in August 2006 as an Assistant Research Professor. His project was to fabricate nanopores (ie small holes with nanometer dimensions), and apply the nanopore to DNA measurements. He was the first of three people in the world to fabricate an artificial nanopore. Dr. Chang also discovered a new physical phenomenon in Nanoscience. The counterions surrounding DNA generate ionic currents, which are classically immeasurable. However, he showed that the currents are measurable with his nanopore, and proved that the currents are dominating over the other components in ion currents in nanoscopic view. His research interests are MEMS/NEMS and its applications in Biology and Medicine, Biomedical Devices, Bioinstrumentation, Nanofabrication, Nanostructure, and Nanosciences.

About the Talk:

A single nanopore is an ideal tool for the manipulation and the analysis of a single molecule since its size is well-suited to keep one molecule at one time. The nanopore has been used to study and characterize DNA, RNA, viruses in the past decade. The related research was performed with a biological nanopore, alpha-hemolysin, in the early stage; however, more researchers are attempting to utilize a synthesized nanopore as the platform. An artificial nanopore has the following advantages: 1. robust, 2. flexible in size, 3. molecule-modifiable and 4. integratible and compatible with current semiconductor fabrication technology. Therefore, a synthesized nanopore can have broader applications in biology and medicine.

Three main methods to fabricate a solid-state nanopore will be presented and compared: 1. shrinking a pore in TEM (Transmission Electron Microscope), 2. shrinking a pore in FESEM (Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope), and 3. drilling and shrinking a pore in FIB (Focused Ion Beam). The biomedical applications of a synthesized nanopore in potential will be introduced: A nanopore could be the rapid, economic and high throughput device for sequencing DNA, sensing and classifying viruses, and diagnosing cancers. At last, some of the preliminary experiments for supporting and proving the above concepts will be discussed.

Click here for seminar archives

Note: All masters thesis and PhD dissertation (proposal) are counted towards ECE791.