A Platform for Optical Nanomachining and Nanoablation, for Biomedical Eng & Basic

描述（由申请人提供）：支持细胞功能的大分子机制主要在纳米尺度上运作，纳米尺度科学和技术被广泛认为是重要的新兴学科，具有影响新药和诊断设备开发的广泛潜力。实现这一潜力的主要挑战是在纳米尺度上精确操纵和修饰材料的困难。这可以通过应用最近发现的飞秒激光纳米加工和烧蚀来解决。飞秒脉冲激光产生的损伤精度是如此之高，以至于它可以在比衍射通常给光学技术带来的限制小得多的范围内进行选择性激光消融和加工。在这里，我们建议构建一种设备，将这种方法用于靶向亚细胞手术和生物医学应用的加工设备。这将解决对纳米尺度研究和加工方法的快速增长的需求，并将应用于基础和应用生物医学科学的研究。建议的应用包括：流体和芯片实验室设备的研究；用于医学和生物学研究的亚细胞手术和消融；用于生物传感和诊断的纳米孔；纳米制造和蛋白质模式的底物控制和研究细胞粘附和运动。将积极研究和鼓励将该仪器应用于涉及更多研究人员的更广泛的生物医学研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The macromolecular machinery that supports cellular functioning principally operates on the scale of nanometers, and nanoscale science and technology are broadly recognized as important emerging disciplines, with broad potential to impact the development of new drugs and diagnostic devices. A principal challenge to realizing this potential is the difficulty of precise manipulation and modification of materials at the nanometer scale. This can be addressed by applying the recent discovery of femtosecond laser nanomachining and ablation. The precision of damage produced by femtosecond pulsed lasers is so great that it enables selective laser ablation and machining at scales far smaller than the limits that diffraction typically places on optical techniques. Here we propose to construct a device that will use this approach for targeted subcellular surgery, and machining devices for biomedical applications. This will address the rapidly growing demand for nanoscale research and processing methods, and will be applied to research in basic and applied biomedical science. Proposed applications include: investigations of fluidic and lab-on-a-chip devices; subcellular surgery and ablation for medical and biological research; nanopores for biological sensing and diagnostics; nanofabrication and protein patterning of substrates to control and study cellular adhesion and motility. Application of this instrumentation to an even broader range of biomedical studies involving additional investigators will be actively investigated and encouraged.