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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Oct 13.
Published in final edited form as: Nano Biomed Eng. 2010 Jan 1;2(3):155–164. doi: 10.5101/nbe.v2i3.p155-164

Figure 5.

Figure 5

Schematic depiction of the proposed mechanism for the increased rapidity and sensitivity of ELISA using low-power microwave heating and silver nanoparticles. Effect1: Upon exposure to microwave heating, a thermal gradient between water and silver nanoparticles is created due to the differences between their thermal conductivity (k) values. Since k values for water and FR4 substrate are similar, a thermal gradient is not expected to occur in the samples without silver nanoparticles. Thermal gradient between water and silver nanoparticles results in rapid mass transfer of b-BSA from the bulk to the surface of silver and subsequent rapid assembly of b-BSA on silver. Effect 2: microwave heating accelerates the enzymatic conversion of o-Phenylenediamine (OPD) to a colored product.