Nanomechanical gas chromatography for metabolite detection and breath analysis

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Nanosensors continue to attract intense research attention for physical, chemical, and biological analysis due to intriguing properties like exceptional sensitivity and the promise of portability. Nanomechanical systems are one example: their surprising capability to weigh individual molecules has established their immense sensing potential. Gas chromatography is a very powerful analytical technique where broader portable adoption will benefit a wide swath of applications ranging from environmental monitoring to disease diagnosis. The main objective of this program is to incorporate nanomechanical sensing into gas chromatography to provide enhanced functionality. The ultimate goal is robust detection and identification of gas molecules by inexpensive portable platforms. Building on our past strengths, three interrelated objectives will focus our efforts in working towards these goals. 1) The sensitivity of nanomechanical systems will be pushed towards an ultimate limit. 2) A novel gas microchannel system will be developed and exploited to best take advantage of this sensitivity. 3) The analytical power of nanomechanical sensors will be broadened by studying deployments which provide additional information (such as arrays of different sensor coatings). These efforts will be carried out as the nanomechanical sensors are compared to regular sensors during gas chromatography of real compounds such as disease biomarkers. The platform created in this program will have immediate impacts in the fields of nanophotonics, nanomechanics, gas chromatography, and analytical sensing. The anticipated significance includes elucidation of the rapidly growing combined fields of photonics and nanomechanics, the development of a new gas chromatography technique, better limits of detection with improved gas molecule recognition, new methods for biomarker profiling, and ubiquitous accessible chemical analysis. Undergraduate and graduate students will be trained to a high level in a unique multi-disciplinary environment of nanofabrication, photonics, nanomechanics, chromatography, and metabolomics expertise and analytical and optoelectronic instrumentation.