NIRT: Active Nanophotofluidic Systems for Single Molecule/Particle Analysis

0708599埃里克森，大卫C.这个NSF-NIRT奖是围绕积极整合纳米光子学，纳米流体，纳米材料和单分子物理到一个新的领域，在此称为“纳米光流体”。该团队由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研究计划，以利用我们新开发的50 nm宽曝光模式中可实现的极高光学强度。槽波导？进行光流体镊子和推进（通过利用偏振和散射/吸附力），并展示了一系列新的活性纳米单分子和多粒子分析工具。该计划分为三个重点研究领域：1）对纳米尺度上的电磁学和流体力学耦合有更好的基本理解，以展示更广泛的纳米光流体传输架构的核心要素，2）展示迄今为止开发的最坚决的分离机制，3）开发一种新的机制，用于研究溶液中单个蛋白质的折叠动力学。更广泛的影响将光子元件作为有源元件集成在微流体和纳米流体设备中代表了一个基本上未开发的领域，该领域可能会产生重大影响，可以扩展到广泛的新型光子驱动微流体设备中，其中使用电信行业已经开发的高速组件进行快速，基于网络的粒子操纵。 这种平台可能会在纳米组装等新兴领域中找到应用（提供光学镊子的所有优点，但更快，更精确）。 该计划的一个基本组成部分是一个推广和教育战略，包括：1）通过康奈尔大街科学计划和2）一个跨学科的纳米科学和工程研讨会系列分布到全国K-12教室的一系列综合教育单位的发展北部纽约地区。这一系列研讨会将吸引来自两所大学以及纽约北部的本科院校的与会者。讲座亦会上载于一个专门网站供下载。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，这些问题将由演讲者或PI直接回答。这项研究与NSF有源纳米结构和纳米尺度器件和系统架构研究主题保持一致。

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.