“All of this is resulting in a revolutionary compact lab-on-a-chip – an innovative approach to detecting and diagnosing a tumor or a viral disease,” said Alexander Kildishev, researcher and associate professor with Purdue’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The Purdue plasmonic metafilms use a combination of thermal and electric fields to create hydrodynamic flows that result in the rapid transport of suspended particles, bringing them to the surface of the metal film for easy trapping and detection.
The system can sort these tiny particles and then collectively detect sorted patterns such as drug contaminants or water impurities, resulting in potential applications for pharmaceuticals, biohazard detection, and water quality tests.
The Purdue nanotweezers could be also used with inexpensive broadband light sources for combining noble metal and dielectric nanoparticles, which could have applications for long-lasting, nonfading color printing.
The Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization helped secure a patent for the technology. It is available for licensing.