Structural analysis of soft multicomponent nanoparticle clusters.

Quantitative techniques are essential to analyze the structure of soft multicomponent nanobioclusters. Here, we combine electrospray differential mobility analysis (ES-DMA), which rapidly measures the size of the entire cluster, with transmission electron microscopy (TEM), which detects the hard components, to determine the presence and composition of the softer components. Coupling analysis of TEM and ES-DMA derived data requires the creation and use of analytical models to determine the size and number of constituents in nanoparticle complexes from the difference between the two measurements. Previous ES-DMA analyses have been limited to clusters of identical spherical particles. Here, we dramatically extend the ES-DMA analysis framework to accommodate more challenging geometries, including protein corona-coated nanorods, clusters composed of heterogeneously sized nanospheres, and nanobioclusters composed of both nanospheres and nanorods. The latter is critical to determining the number of quantum dots attached to lambda (λ) phage, a key element of a rapid method to detect bacterial pathogens in environmental and clinical samples.