Development of zinc oxide-based sub-micro pillar arrays for on-site capture and DNA detection of foodborne pathogen

Abstract Prevention and early detection of bacterial infection caused by foodborne pathogens are the most important task to human society. Although currently available diagnostic technologies have been developed and designed for detection of specific pathogens, suitable capturing tools for the pathogens are rarely studied. In this paper, a new methodology is developed and proposed to realize effective capturing through touchable flexible zinc oxide-based sub-micro pillar arrays through genetic analysis. Zinc oxide coated pillar arrays have a high surface area, flexible, and adheres strongly to bacteria. Therefore, it contributes to enhance the bacterial capturability. An in-depth analysis on the sub-sequential capturing process at the bacterial cell-pillar interface is presented. By carefully observing the structural changes and performing numerical analysis under different reaction times, the results are presented. The resulting zinc oxide coated pillar arrays exhibited comprehensive capturability. These pillars were able to detect pathogenic bacteria due to a combination of complex structures, depletion force, and high surface electrostatics. The developed sub-micro pillars successfully captured and detected infectious foodborne bacteria of Escherichia coli in the range of 106–101 CFU/mL.