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Terahertz Lab-on-a-Chip for Bio-liquid Analysis

用于生物液体分析的太赫兹芯片实验室

基本信息

批准号：
EP/V001655/1
负责人：
Stephen Hanham
金额：
$ 40.19万
依托单位：
University of Birmingham
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2021
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2021 至无数据
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FV001655%2F1
关键词：
Terahertz Lab Chip Bio liquid

项目摘要

There is an increasing global demand for new technologies which deliver rapid and accurate medical diagnostics and lead to improved patient outcomes. The biological sensors field has grown dramatically to meet this demand, aided by significant improvements in microfluidics and microelectronics. This revolution in micro-technology has led to the realisation of biological sensors in the form of a lab-on-a-chip (LOC) that can perform one or more lab analyses of minute quantities of liquid samples on a single chip. This analysis can take many different forms such as chemical, acoustic, low-frequency electrical or optical.The terahertz frequency range (100 GHz to 3 THz) is an emerging area for the electromagnetic analysis of biological systems. For biological liquids, it is capable of probing rotational and vibrational modes present in biomolecule-solvent systems and is also highly sensitive to biomolecular hydration, temperature, binding and conformational states. Despite these significant advantages for sensing, terahertz waves suffer from a relatively long wavelength which limits the smallest detectable object or liquid volume that can be sensed to a size comparable to a wavelength cubed. This size limit, called the diffraction limit, is significantly larger than many objects of interest such as a biological cell.In this work, we propose to integrate multiple terahertz resonators with a microfluidic system to create a LOC capable of rapidly sensing free-flowing bio-liquids. The resonators are designed to concentrate the measuring electric field down to a volume comparable to a cell size, overcoming the diffraction limit, and permitting the electromagnetic analysis of picolitre quantities of biological liquids and individual cells. This LOC will function as a measurement platform for scientific studies of cells, extremely small quantities of various cell components (e.g. proteins, DNA and RNA) and other biomolecules of interest.The research programme intends to push the current state-of-the-art in terahertz liquid sensing in terms of sensitivity (10x), minimum sample volume and low-cost fabrication to open up new sensing and diagnostic opportunities in point-of-care diagnosis and clinical applications. While primarily directed towards the analysis of bio-liquids, the lab-on-a-chip devices developed will also prove useful for the analysis of toxic and explosive liquids, as well as gas sensing.

全球对能够提供快速、准确的医疗诊断并改善患者治疗效果的新技术的需求不断增长。为了满足这一需求，在微流体和微电子学的显着改进的帮助下，生物传感器领域得到了显着发展。这场微技术革命导致了芯片实验室 (LOC) 形式的生物传感器的实现，它可以在单个芯片上对微量液体样品进行一次或多次实验室分析。这种分析可以采取多种不同的形式，例如化学、声学、低频电学或光学。太赫兹频率范围（100 GHz 至 3 THz）是生物系统电磁分析的新兴领域。对于生物液体，它能够探测生物分子-溶剂系统中存在的旋转和振动模式，并且对生物分子水合、温度、结合和构象状态高度敏感。尽管在传感方面具有这些显着优势，但太赫兹波的波长相对较长，这将可传感的最小可检测物体或液体体积限制为与波长立方相当的尺寸。这个尺寸限制，称为衍射极限，明显大于许多感兴趣的物体，例如生物细胞。在这项工作中，我们建议将多个太赫兹谐振器与微流体系统集成，以创建能够快速感测自由流动的生物液体的LOC。谐振器的设计目的是将测量电场集中到与细胞大小相当的体积，克服衍射极限，并允许对皮升量的生物液体和单个细胞进行电磁分析。该LOC将作为细胞、极少量的各种细胞成分（例如蛋白质、DNA和RNA）以及其他感兴趣的生物分子科学研究的测量平台。该研究计划旨在在灵敏度（10倍）、最小样本量和低成本制造方面推动太赫兹液体传感的当前最先进水平，从而在即时诊断和临床领域开辟新的传感和诊断机会应用程序。虽然主要针对生物液体分析，但所开发的芯片实验室设备也将证明可用于分析有毒和爆炸性液体以及气体传感。