Optical Cavity Enhanced Nanoscale Gas Chromatography

提案标题：光腔增强型纳米级气相色谱研究目标：本研究旨在开发一种集成在柱上光子晶体腔增强的Fano共振纳米传感器阵列的超紧凑型纳米级气相色谱平台，以实现超快和高灵敏的气体分析。非技术摘要：快速和现场化学气相分析在环境监测、医疗保健、工业和工作场所安全以及国防和国家安全等许多应用中提供重要信息。不幸的是，大多数气体传感器缺乏检测特异性，这使得分析通常包含数十到数百种挥发性有机化合物的真实样品具有挑战性。尽管微气相色谱(GC)的最新进展在开发功能强大的便携式气体分析设备方面显示出巨大的潜力，但在保持足够的分离分辨率和有效气体分析所需的小占地面积的同时，实现超高速分离和检测仍然是一个巨大的挑战。这项研究旨在开发一种纳米级的气体分析设备，它具有前所未有的气体分析速度、分离能力、灵敏度、超紧凑的尺寸和系统的可扩展性。这项研究的成功将导致可穿戴和个性化气体传感器的开发，这些传感器可以很容易地被普通公众接受和访问，用于各种应用。从微型GC到纳米GC的规模化带来了一系列科学和工程挑战，包括柱设计、聚合物涂层、纳米级柱和微米级检测/传感方案之间的不匹配、高光谱和空间分辨率的光学传感器以及系统集成架构。除了技术进步，对纳米流体通道中气体分离机理和过程的基础研究提供了对纳米尺度限制内的分子相互作用和气体动力学的独特见解，这不仅对发现新的传感和分离机制具有重要意义，而且还可以扩展到许多看似无关的领域(如肺部的气体交换过程)。通过拟议的项目产生的知识将有助于开发新的技术和工具，将过多的工程领域推向一个新的前沿。拟议的项目为本科生和研究生提供广泛的跨学科教育和培训机会。研究成果还将纳入与当地K-12学校和社区的外联活动，以吸引学生从事STEM职业。技术摘要：本项目的目标是开发一种集成在柱上光子晶体腔增强型Fano共振纳米传感器阵列的纳米GC平台，以实现便携式、定量、超快和高分离分辨率的复杂混合气体中挥发性有机物的分析。在所提出的工作中，直接制作了纳米流体通道，并将其与耦合的光子晶体平板Fano共振滤光片集成在一起，为研究纳米尺度受限环境中的气体分离提供了独特的能力。具体的研究任务包括：(1)纳米流体通道中气体分离机理和过程的基础研究；(2)光子晶体腔增强型传感器阵列的开发；(3)纳米GC通道与光子晶体传感器阵列的芯片集成；(4)用于超快分析复杂混合气体中一组挥发性有机化合物的纳米GC系统的原型。

Proposal Title: Optical Cavity Enhanced Nanoscale Gas ChromatographyProposal Goal: The research aims to pioneer a study on the development of an ultra-compact nanoscale gas chromatography platform with integrated on-column photonic crystal cavity-enhanced Fano resonance nanosensor arrays to achieve ultrafast and highly sensitive gas analysis.Nontechnical Abstract:Rapid and in-situ chemical vapor analysis provides vital information in many applications such as environmental monitoring, healthcare, industrial and workplace safety, and defense and national security. Unfortunately, most gas sensors lack the detection specificity, makes it challenging to analyze real-world samples that usually contain tens to hundreds of volatile organic compounds. Although recent advancement in micro-gas chromatography (GC) demonstrates great potential in the development of powerful portable gas analysis devices, it still remains a grand challenge to achieve ultrafast separation and detection while maintaining adequate separation resolution and small footprint for effective gas analysis. This research aims to develop a nanoscale gas chromatography device that provides unprecedented gas analysis speed, separation capability, sensitivity, ultra-compact size, and system scalability. The success of this research will lead to the development of wearable and personalized gas sensors that can be easily accepted and accessible by the general public for various applications. Scaling from micro-GC to nano-GC presents a range of scientific and engineering challenges, including the column design, polymer coating, mismatch between the nanoscale column and the micro-scale detection/sensing scheme, high spectrally and spatially resolved optical sensors, and system integration architectures. In addition to technical advances, fundamental study of gas separation mechanisms and processes in a nanofluidic channel provides unique insight into the molecular interaction and gas dynamics within nano-sized confinement, which will not only be important for discovery of new sensing and separation mechanisms, but can also be extended to many seemingly unrelated areas (such as gas exchange processes in the lung). The knowledge generated through the proposed project will be instrumental to the development of new techniques and tools to push a plethora of engineering fields to a new frontier.The proposed project offers extensive interdisciplinary education and training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. The research outcomes will also be integrated into the outreach activities with local K-12 schools and communities to attract students to STEM careers. Technical Abstract:The objective of this project is to pioneer a study on the development of a nano-GC platform with integrated on-column photonic crystal cavity-enhanced Fano resonance nanosensor arrays to achieve portable, quantitative, ultra-fast, and high separation resolution volatile organic compounds analysis in complex gas mixtures. In the proposed work, nanofluidic channels are directly fabricated and integrated with the coupled photonic crystal slab Fano resonance filters, offering a unique capability in studying the gas separation in the nanoscale confined environment. The specific research tasks include: (1) Fundamental study of gas separation mechanisms and processes in a nanofluidic channel; (2) Development of the photonic crystal cavity enhanced sensor array; (3) On-chip integration of nano-GC channels with photonic crystal sensor arrays; and (4) Prototyping of a nano-GC system for ultra-fast analysis of a panel of volatile organic compounds in complex gas mixtures.