Lab-on-Chip Detection of Chirals by Ferrites' Field Symmetry Breaking Effects

分子手性在地球上的生命中无处不在，其重要性已得到充分证实，在生物系统的功能中起着至关重要的作用，而且在当前技术领域的许多方面，与化学和先进材料的生产有关。不幸的是，手性的检测仍然是一个复杂而困难的任务。这限制了我们对基本自然程序的理解，并构成了一个主要的技术障碍，阻碍了许多技术领域应对人类目前面临的重大挑战，包括气候变化、能源、粮食和水安全。例如，模仿自然过程的绿色技术，即在化学合成中使用酶，有可能为许多这些问题提供解决办法。酶促反应主要涉及对映体，因此缺乏合适的工具来监测这些反应阻碍了这一领域的进展。该项目将通过利用手性分子与铁氧体产生的磁电场的相互作用来实现手性分子检测的阶跃变化。它将开发基于含有铁氧体的微波谐振结构的便携式传感器。这样将减轻目前对昂贵、费力的准备工作和困难的实验的需要。它将提供必要的技术解决方案，以促进对这些系统的在线和现场监测，并将改变当前的科学和工业模式，为更好地理解和优化控制这些过程铺平道路。因此，它将支持未来开发具有解决基本问题潜力的广泛应用领域。拟议的项目具有高度的创新性、雄心勃勃和及时性。它将推动当前知识的边界，并将开发具有超出当今标准仪器所能实现的能力的分析仪器。它将扩展我们目前对与生物学和真实的应用有关的真实的系统的知识。它将代表对映体表征的便携性、灵活性和速度的一个步骤性变化，而不需要不断地进入装备昂贵的分析实验室。随着传感器和方法的成功开发，目前的做法将被改变，目前在利用高通量筛选和实地研究的各种科学应用中的主要限制将得到适当的解决。此外，跨规模（大规模到芯片实验室解决方案）的原位和在线方法的建立预计将对重要化学品，生物化学和先进材料的开发和大规模生产过程中的工艺优化和控制产生深远的影响，以及更广泛的应用，包括对我们星球上生命起源的调查。

Molecular chirality is ubiquitous in life on earth, its importance is well established and plays a crucial role in the function of biological systems but also in many aspects of the current technological practises, related to the production of chemical and advanced materials. Unfortunately, the detection of chirals remains a complex and difficult task. This limits our understanding of fundamental natural procedures and constitutes a major technological barrier that inhibits numerous technological fields tasked with tackling the grand challenges that humanity is currently facing, including climate change, energy, food and water security. For example, green technologies mimicking natural processes i.e. use of enzymes in chemical synthesis have the potential to offer solutions to many of those problems. Enzymatic reactions mainly involve enantiomers therefore progress in this field is hindered by the lack of the appropriate tools for monitoring these reactions. This project will deliver step changes in the detection of chiral molecules by exploiting their interaction with magneto-electric fields generated by ferrites. It will develop miniaturised/portable sensors based on microwave resonant structures containing ferrites. In that way will alleviate the current need for costly, laborious preparations and difficult experimentation. It will provide the technological solutions that are necessary to facilitate on-line and in-situ monitoring of such systems and will transform current scientific and industrial practises paving the road to better understanding and optimised control of these processes. Therefore, it will underpin the future development of a vast area of applications that have the potential to tackle essential problems. The proposed project is highly innovative, ambitious and timely. It will push the boundaries of current knowledge and will develop analytical instrumentation with capabilities that are beyond what is achievable today with standard instrumentation. It will expand our current knowledge of real systems that are pertinent to biology and real life applications. It will represent a step change in portability, flexibility and speed of characterisation of enantiomers without the constant need for access to expensively equipped analytical laboratories. Following the successful development of the sensors and methodologies, current practices will be transformed and current major limitations in diverse scientific applications that utilise high throughput screening and field studies will be suitably addressed. In addition, the establishment of in-situ and online methodologies across the scales (large scale to lab on chip solutions) is expected to have a profound impact in process optimisation and control during the development and mass production of important chemicals, biochemical and advanced materials as well as broader applications including investigations on the origins of life in our planet.