NIRT: Active Nanophotofluidic Systems for Single Molecule/Particle Analysis

该NSF-NIRT奖的核心是将纳米光子学、纳米流体、纳米材料和单分子物理积极地整合到一个新的领域，在这里被称为“纳米光流体”。组建的团队由来自康奈尔大学和罗切斯特大学的研究人员组成，他们带来了独特的个人专业知识，形成了综合的、多学科的研究计划，以利用我们新开发的50 nm宽曝光模式？缝隙波导？可以实现的极高的光强度。进行光流体钳制和推进(利用极化和散射/吸附力)，并展示一系列新的活性纳米单分子和多粒子分析工具。智力价值该计划分为三个重点研究领域：1)在纳米尺度上更好地了解电磁学和流体动力学的耦合，以展示更广泛的纳米光流体传输体系的核心元素；2)展示迄今开发的最坚定的分离机制；以及3)开发一种新的机制，用于研究单一蛋白质在溶液中的折叠动力学。更广泛的影响将光子元件作为活性成分集成在微纳流体设备中是一个基本上未被探索的领域，可能会产生重大影响，可能扩展到广泛的新型光子驱动微流体设备，在这些设备中，使用电信行业已经开发的高速组件来执行快速的、基于网络的粒子操纵。这样的平台可能会在新兴领域找到应用，如纳米组装(提供光学镊子的所有优势，但更快，具有亚波长精度)。该计划的一个基本部分是外展和教育战略，包括：1)开发一系列综合教育单元，通过康奈尔大街科学计划分发给全国的K-12教室；2)为纽约州北部地区举办一系列跨学科纳米科学和工程研讨会。这一系列研讨会将吸引来自两所大学以及纽约州北部本科院校的与会者。讲座还将发布在一个专门的网站上供下载。来自目标机构的学生也将有机会在一个专门的网站上发布问题，由演讲者或PIS直接回答。这项研究与NSF主动纳米结构和纳米尺度器件和系统架构的研究主题很好地结合在一起。

0708599Erickson, David C.This NSF-NIRT award is centered around the active integration of nanophotonics, nanofluidics, nanomaterials and single molecule physics into a new field, refered herein as ''Nanophotofluidics''. The assembled team consists of researchers from Cornell University and the University of Rochester bringing distinct individual expertise to form the integrated, multidisciplinary research program to exploit the extremely high optical intensities achievable in our newly developed 50nm wide exposed mode ?slot waveguides? to perform optofluidic tweezing and propulsion (by exploiting polarization and scattering/adsorption forces) and demonstrate a series of new active nanoscopic single molecule and multi-particle analytical tools. Intellectual MeritThis program is divided into three focused research areas: 1) develop a better fundamental understanding of the coupling of electromagnetics and hydrodynamics on the nanoscale to demonstrate the core elements of a broader nanophotofluidic transport architecture, 2) demonstrate the most resolute separation mechanism developed to date, and 3) develop a new mechanism for investigating single protein folding dynamics in solution. Broader Impacts Integrating photonic elements as active components in micro- and nano-fluidic devices represents a largely unexplored area that could have significant impact that could be extended into a broad new class of photonically driven microfluidic devices where rapid, network based particle manipulation is performed using the high-speed components already developed by the telecommunications industry. Such platforms may find application in emerging fields such as nano-assembly (offering all the advantages of optical tweezing but more rapidly and with sub-wavelength precision). A fundamental part of this program is an outreach and education strategy consisting of: 1) The development of a series of integrated educational units distributed to K-12 classrooms nationwide through the Cornell Main Street Science program and 2) An interdisciplinary nanoscience and engineering seminar series for the upstate New York area. This seminar series will attract attendees from both universities as well as undergraduate institutions in upstate New York. The talks will also be posted on a dedicated website for download. Students from the target institutions will also be given the opportunity to post questions on a dedicated website which will be answered directly by the speaker or the PIs.This research is well aligned with both NSF Active Nanostructures and Nanoscale Devices and System Architecture research themes.