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，它的重要性是众所周知的，在生物系统的功能中起着至关重要的作用，而且在当前技术实践的许多方面，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项复杂而艰巨的任务。这限制了我们对基本自然过程的理解，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方案。酶促反应主要涉及对映体，因此缺乏监测这些反应的适当工具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，实现手性分子检测的阶梯式变化。它将开发基于含有铁氧体的微波谐振结构的小型化/便携式传感器。这样就可以减轻目前对昂贵、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办法，以促进对这些系统的在线和现场监测，并将改变目前的科学和工业做法，为更好地了解和优化控制这些过程铺平道路。因此，它将支持有潜力解决基本问题的广泛应用领域的未来发展。拟议的项目极具创新性、雄心勃勃且及时。它将突破现有知识的界限，并将开发出具有超越当今标准仪器所能实现的功能的分析仪器。它将扩展我们目前对与生物学和现实生活应用相关的真实系统的知识。它将代表在便携性、灵活性和表征对映体的速度方面的一个步骤变化，而不需要经常进入设备昂贵的分析实验室。随着传感器和方法的成功开发，目前的做法将得到改变，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、生化和先进材料的开发和大规模生产过程中的过程优化和控制产生深远影响，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.