Optical Cavity Enhanced Nanoscale Gas Chromatography

项目名称：光学腔增强纳米气相色谱仪项目目标：本研究旨在开发一种集成柱上光子晶体腔增强法诺共振纳米传感器阵列的超紧凑纳米气相色谱仪平台，以实现超快速、高灵敏度的气体分析。摘要：快速、原位化学蒸气分析为环境监测、医疗保健、工业和工作场所安全、国防和国家安全等许多应用提供了重要信息。不幸的是，大多数气体传感器缺乏检测特异性，这使得分析通常含有数十到数百种挥发性有机化合物的真实样品具有挑战性。尽管近年来微气相色谱（GC）技术的进步在开发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小占地面积以进行有效气体分析的同时实现超快速分离和检测仍然是一个巨大的挑战。本研究旨在开发一种纳米级气相色谱装置，提供前所未有的气体分析速度、分离能力、灵敏度、超紧凑尺寸和系统可扩展性。这项研究的成功将导致可穿戴和个性化气体传感器的发展，这些传感器可以很容易地被公众接受和使用，用于各种应用。从微气相色谱到纳米气相色谱的扩展带来了一系列科学和工程挑战，包括色谱柱设计、聚合物涂层、纳米色谱柱与微尺度检测/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。除了技术进步之外，纳米流体通道中气体分离机制和过程的基础研究为纳米尺寸限制内的分子相互作用和气体动力学提供了独特的见解，这不仅对发现新的传感和分离机制很重要，而且还可以扩展到许多看似无关的领域（如肺中的气体交换过程）。通过提议的项目产生的知识将有助于新技术和工具的开发，将大量的工程领域推向新的前沿。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。研究成果也将纳入与当地K-12学校和社区的外展活动，以吸引学生从事STEM职业。技术摘要：本项目旨在开发一种集成柱上光子晶体腔增强法诺共振纳米传感器阵列的纳米气相色谱平台，以实现复杂气体混合物中挥发性有机化合物的便携式、定量、超快速和高分离分辨率分析。在本文提出的工作中，纳米流体通道被直接制造并与耦合光子晶体板范诺谐振滤波器集成，为研究纳米尺度密闭环境下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)光子晶体腔增强传感器阵列的研制；(3)纳米气相色谱通道与光子晶体传感器阵列的片上集成；(4)纳米气相色谱系统的原型设计，用于超快速分析复杂气体混合物中的一组挥发性有机化合物。

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.