Dielectrophoretic borophene tweezer: Sub-10 mV nano-particle trapping

Abstract

Impressive characteristics of the recently synthesized metallic borophene render it a promising two-dimensional (2D) material for a multitude of applications in nanotechnology. In this work, by employing a multiscale atom-to-tweezer methodology, the operation of borophene as electrode material in a dielectrophoretic (DEP) tweezer is carefully analyzed. According to the results, the proposed borophene-based DEP tweezer significantly enhances the electric field intensity gradient by at least 4 orders of magnitude, thereby surpassing the recently proposed graphene-based DEP tweezer in both short-range and long-range operating regimes. Furthermore, it is found that borophene pushes the limit of 2D-material-based DEP trapping to record-breakingly low voltages. The proposed borophene-based DEP tweezer is predicted to be capable of trapping sub-10-nm polystyrene beads by exerting voltages as low as 20 mV and capturing the herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) by applying a voltage of merely 2 mV, with nearly-100-percent spatial resolution. The results indicate that borophene-based DEP devices can realize ultimate control in the manipulation of nanoparticles.