COMPUTER MODELING OF BIOLOGICAL CONTAMINANTS IN A TRACK BIOSENSOR

Abstract

Many solids in biology, medicine and technology are porous materials into which impurity solutions are capable of penetrating. Concerning the pore population, one has to distinguish on the one hand, between open and closed pores, and on the other hand, between macroscopic and nanoscopic pores. Open pores are accessible from the surface by non-diffusive capillarity percolation processes or micro-capillary diffusion; closed pores that do not have any direct connection to the outside world are accessible from the outside only by diffusion. The transition from macroscopic (where fluid dynamics and capillarity hold) to nanoscopic (where nanofluidics holds) pores takes place when the pore radius is of a similar magnitude to the Debye length. Creation of sensor systems for detecting extremely low concentrations of biological contaminants in liquid media is the most important task of bio-nanotechnologies. Since such systems are in great demand, it is necessary to find ways to make such devices as cheap and simple as possible while ensuring their high sensitivity. In this work, using computer simulation, we demonstrate the possibility of creating biosensors based on the use of measurements of the simplest physical characteristics. It is shown that the sizes of particles that pollute the environment and their charge can serve as discriminating parameters that allow one to detect the presence of such particles. To conduct a computer experiment, a model of a track biosensor was developed.