SBIR Phase I: Long-Wave Infrared Plasmonic Biosensor

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目旨在提高识别和量化生物分子、细胞、微生物及其相互作用的仪器的能力。该项目的目标是证明表面等离子体共振（SPR）生物传感器的可行性，该传感器首次可以在扩展波长域内工作，其中生物分析物通过其吸收光谱和相应的折射率变化被强烈区分。与目前的商业系统相比，这种创新如果成功，将提供更高的灵敏度和物种选择性。当生物分析物与附着在传感器表面的物种选择性生物分子识别元件可逆结合时，将观察到生物分析物的大光学变化。该项目的更广泛/商业影响是通过提供访问电磁频谱的一个新的重要部分来丰富和扩展经过验证的SPR生物传感器技术。SPR生物传感器市场主要是完全在可见-近红外光谱区域运行的系统，化学物种的光谱差异相对较小。该项目旨在产生具有重大改进的SPR生物传感器，这将在生命科学，电分析，药物发现，食品质量和安全，环境科学，气相和液相化学，法医，国防和安全方面具有价值。特别有价值的是它描述超快速动力学相互作用的新能力，例如DNA测序，蛋白质/蛋白质相互作用和配体/受体识别。这些对目前可用的化学和生物传感器技术的改进有望使SPR生物传感市场得到显著扩展。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project seeks to enhance the capability of an instrument for identifying and quantifying bio-molecules, cells, microbes, and their interactions. The goal of the project is to demonstrate the feasibility of a Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) biosensor that, for the first time, can operate in an extended wavelength domain, where biological analytes are strongly differentiated by their absorption spectra and consequential variation of refractive index. In comparison with current commercial systems, this innovation, if successful, will provide enhanced sensitivity and species selectivity. Large optical changes in biological analytes will be observed as they bind reversibly to species-selective biomolecular recognition elements attached to the sensor surface. The broader/commercial impact of this project is to enrich and extend the proven SPR biosensor technology by providing access to a new and important part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The SPR biosensor market is dominated systems that operate entirely in the visible - near infrared spectral region with relatively little spectral differentiation of chemical species. This project is intended to result in a SPR Biosensor with significant improvements that will be of value in life science, electro-analysis, drug discovery, food quality and safety, environmental science, gas-and liquid-phase chemicals, forensics, defense, and security. Of particular value will be its novel ability to delineate ultra-fast kinetic interactions such as those from DNA sequencing, protein/protein interaction, and ligand/receptor recognition. These improvements over currently available chemical and biosensor technologies are expected to enable significant expansion of the SPR biosensing market.