AUTHOR=Li Lei , Tian Feng , Chang Hao , Zhang Jie , Wang Cheng , Rao Wei , Hu Huan 

TITLE=Interactions of Bacteria With Monolithic Lateral Silicon Nanospikes Inside a Microfluidic Channel

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry

VOLUME=Volume 7 - 2019

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2019.00483

DOI=10.3389/fchem.2019.00483

ISSN=2296-2646

ABSTRACT=This paper presents a new strategy of integrating lateral silicon nanospikes using metal-assisted chemical etching (MacEtch) on the sidewall of micropillars for on-chip bacterial study. Silicon nanospikes have been reported to be able to kill bacteria without using chemicals and offer a new route to kill bacteria and can prevent the overuse of antibiotics to reduce bacteria. We demonstrated a new methodology to fabricate a chip with integrated silicon nanospikes onto the sidewalls of micropillars inside the microfluidic channel and attested its interactions with the representative gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli. The results of colony-forming unit (CFU) calculation showed that 80% bacteria lost their viability after passing through the chip. Moreover, the results of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) measurement indicated that the chip with lateral silicon nanospikes could extract more than 2 times ATP contents compared with the chip without lateral silicon nanospikes, showing potential for using the chip with lateral silicon nanospikes as a bacterial lysing module.