Biological/biochemistry analyses traditionally require bulky instruments and a great amount of volume of biological/chemical agents, and many procedures have to be performed in certain locations such as medical centers or research institutions. These limitations usually include time delay in testing. The delays may be critical for some aspects such as disease prevention or patient treatment. One solution to this issue is the realization of point-of-care (POC) testings for patients, a domain in public health, meaning that health cares are provided near the sites of patients using well-designed and portable medical devices. Transportation of samples between local and central institutions can therefore be reduced, facilitating early and fast diagnosis. A closely related topic in engineering, lab-on-a-chip (LOC), has been discussed and practiced in recent years. LOC emphasizes integrating several functions of laboratory processes in a small portable device and performing analysis using only a very small amount of sample volume, to achieve low-cost and rapid analysis. From an engineer's point of view, LOC is the strategy to practice the idea of POC testing. This dissertation aimed at exploring the POC potentials of porous membrane-base LOC devices, which can be used to simplify traditional and standard laboratory procedures. In this study, three LOC prototypes are shown and discussed. First the protein sensor incorporating with silica nanofiber membrane, which has shown 32 times more improvement of sensitivity than a conventional technique and a much shorter detection time; secondly the bacteria filter chip that uses a sandwiched aluminum oxide membrane to stabilize the bacteria and monitor the efficacy of antibiotics, which has reduced the test time from 1 day of the traditional methods to 1 hour; the third is the sensor combining microfluidics and silica nanofiber membrane to realize Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy on bio-molecules, which has enhancement factor 10^9 and detection limit down to nanomolar, but simple manufacturing procedures and reduced fabrication cost. These results show the porous-base membrane LOC devices may have potentials in improving and replacing traditional detection methods and eventually be used in POC applications.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 274-296). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Victoria University of Wellington, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-276).

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:27:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2008-08-29Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:55:41Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 volpati_d_me_bauru.pdf: 5747357 bytes, checksum: 51588cae60e48257109b7cd67deb6faa (MD5) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Filmes finos do bis benzimidazo perileno (AzoPTCD) foram fabricados usando as técnicas de Langmuir, Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) e evaporação a vácuo (PVD). A estabilidade térmica durante a fabricação dos filmes PVD ('DA ORDEM DE' '400 GRAUS' a '10 POT. -6' Torr) e a integridade da estrutura molecular pela dissolução do AzoPTCD em ácidos fortes para a fabricação dos filmes de Langmuir e LB foram monitoradas pelo espalhamento Raman. Complementarmente a análise termogravimétrica revelou que a degradação térmica do AzoPTCD ocorre a '675 GRAUS'. Os filmes de Langmuir revelaram um alto empacotamento molecular do AzoPTCD sobre a subfase aquosa, onde as moléculas estão apoiadas sobre seu eixo maior ou menor. A adição de íons metálicos na subface aquosa revelou uma sensibilidade do AzoPTCD a presença destes íons, deslocando as isotermas para maiores valores de área molecular média. O crescimento dos filmes LB e PVD sobre substratos sólidos foi monitorado através da espectroscopia de absorção UV-Vis, e a morfologia dos filmes PVD foi estudada via microscopia de força atômica (AFM) em função da espessura em massa. A organização molecular dos filmes PVD foi determinada usando as regras de seleção de superfície aplicadas na espectroscopia de absorção no infravermelho (modos de transmissão e reflexão). Apesar da organização molecular, a difração de raios-x revelou que os filmes PVD são amorfos. Cálculos teóricos (Density functional theory -B3LYP) foram usados para atribuição dos modos vibracionais nos espectros de absorção no infravermelho e espalhamento Raman ressoante Nanoestruturas metálicas, capazes de ativar os fenômenos de amplificação em superfície foram usadas para estudos de espalhamento Raman ressonante amplificado em superfície (SERRS) e fluorescência amplificada em superfície (SEF) nos filmes LB e PVD. Através... / Thin solid films of bis benzimidazo perylene (AzoPTCD) were fabricated using Langmuir, Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) and physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques. Thermal stability during the fabrication of PVD films ('DA ORDEM DE' '400 GRAUS' a '10 POT. -6' Torr) and chemical structure integrity by dissolution of the AzoPTCD in a strong acid were monitored by Raman scattering. Complementary thermogravimetric results showed that thermal degradation of AzoPTCD occurs at '675 GRAUS'. Langmuir films showed a high molecular packing with the molecules tilted onto the aqueous subphase. Besides, the AzoPTCD л-A isotherms were shifted to larger areas due to the addition of metallic ions in the subphase. The growth of the LB and PVD films were established through UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy, and the surface morphology in PVD films was probed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) as function of the mass thickness. The AzoPTCD molecular organization in the PVD films was determined using the selection rules of infrared absorption spectroscopy (transmission and reflection-absorption modes). Despite the molecular organization, X-ray diffraction revealed that the PVD films are amorphous. Theoretical calculations (Density Functional Theory, B3LYP) were used to assign the vibrational modes in the infrared and Raman spectra. Metallic nanostructures, able to sustain localized surface plasmons (LSP) were used to achieve surface-enhanced resonance Raman scattering (SERRS) and surface-enhanced fluirescence (SEF) in the LB and PVD films. The conductivity and rectifier character of the PVD films of AzoPTCD were determined by current as function of tension curves (I(V)) in dc measurements. The impedance spectroscopy in ac measurements was used to study the performance of PVD films of the AzoPTCD as transductor elements in sensing units applied to discriminate... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) has the potential to be a rapid disease diagnostic platform. SERS is a well-known ultrasensitive, label-free method for the detection and identification of molecules at low concentrations. The Raman cross-sections are primarily enhanced by plasmonic effects for molecules close to (< 5 nm) the surface of nanostructured metal substrates. Due to the unique Raman vibration features that provide molecular signatures, we have shown that SERS can provide a rapid (< one hour), label-free, sensitive and specific diagnosis for a number of diseases. This work demonstrates the capability of SERS to be an effective optical diagnostic approach, in particular, for bacterial infectious diseases such as urinary tract infections (UTI) and sexually transmitted diseases (STD), and cancer cell identification. More specifically, this work demonstrates the ability of SERS to distinguish different vegetative bacterial cells with species and strain specificity based on their intrinsic SERS molecular signatures. With the exception of C. trachomatis - the causative agent of chlamydia - whose SERS molecular signatures are found to be aggregated proteins on the cell membrane, all bacterial SERS molecular signatures are due to purine molecules resulting from nucleic acid metabolism as part of the rapid onset of the starvation response of these pathogens. The differences in relative contribution of different purine metabolites for each bacterium gives rise to the SERS strain and species specificity. The ability of SERS to distinguish cancer and normal cells grown in vitro based on changes of SERS spectral feature as a function of time after sample processing is also demonstrated. Furthermore, the difference of spectral features on the gold and silver SERS substrate of the same bacteria can be used as additional attribute for identification. This work demonstrate the potential of SERS platform to provide antibiotic-specific diagnostics in clinical settings within one hour when combined with a portable Raman microscopy instrument, an effective enrichment procedure, multivariate data analysis and an expendable SERS reference library with drug-susceptibility profile for each bacterial strain determined a priori, as well as the ability of SERS platform as a powerful bioanalytical probe for learning about near cell membrane biochemical processes.

Venir sonder de faibles quantités de molécules nécessite des capteurs ultra-sensibles. Il a été démontré que les capteurs plasmoniques pouvaient remplir ce rôle. Toutefois, même après trente ans de recherches, beaucoup de questions restent sans réponses. Dans cette étude nous tentons d'y répondre : que se passe-t-il lorsqu'une molécule s'adsorbe sur la surface d'une nanoparticule ? Lorsqu'une monocouche de molécule s'adsorbe ? Et que se passe-t-il pour les molécules suivantes ? Peut-on améliorer simplement la sensibilité et la lisibilité des nano-capteurs plasmoniques? Nous démontrons expérimentalement un comportement singulier lorsque la quantité de molécules dans le champ proche des nanoparticules est très faible, typiquement de quelques zeptogrammes. Afin de mesurer cette infime quantité de matière, des solutions d'amplification des signaux sont étudiées comme l'intégration de capteurs sur des micro-lentilles axicon, ou encore sur des nano-cavités de type Fabry-Perot. Nous avons développé les micro-lentilles axicon afin de palier la faible intensité du signal émanant de nanoparticules uniques. Elles ont pour but de redistribuer le champ électromagnétique, en faisceau de Bessel de faible ouverture numérique, donc facilement mesurable. Les nano-cavités optiques ont, quant à elles, étaient développées afin de diminuer l'amortissement des résonances plasmon et ainsi affiner les résonances et augmenter la lisibilité des capteurs.Toutes ces études ont un même but : détecter in-situ les marqueurs de maladies à des concentrations infinitésimales afin de traiter les patients avant les premiers symptômes / Ultra sensitive sensors are required to probe very low concentrations of molecules. It has been shown that plasmonic nano-sensors could play this role. Nevertheless, even after thirteen years of research, a lot of questions remain unanswered.We will try to answer them in this study: what happens when a single molecule is adsorbed on a nanoparticle surface? In a monolayer? And what happens for the next layer of molecules? Can we easily enhance the sensitivity and the readability of sensors? We demonstrate experimentally a singular behavior when the quantity of molecules in the near-field region is very low, typically in the zeptogram level. To measure the low quantity of matter, different techniques to enhance the signal are studied: integration of sensor on axicon micro-lenses of Fabry-Perot like nano-cavities. We developed axicon micro-lenses to increase the intensity of unique nanoparticle signal. They redistribute the electromagnetic field into a Bessel beam with low numerical aperture, allowing an easy collection in far field. Nano-cavities have been designed to decrease the damping and refine the plasmonic resonance to increase the readability of the sensors. All these studies have the same target: to detect in-situ disease markers at very low concentrations in order to treat the patients before the first symptoms

Gold nanoparticles produced using the Turkevich method were able to have their hydrophobicity modified using octanethiol in a novel method for SERS application. Both amphiliphic GNPs and hydrophobic GNPs were produced and differentiated by Raman signals. The amphiliphic GNPs were able to enhance the SERS signals of the protein emulsifier in the emulsion in situ and the hydrophobic GNPs were able to enhance the SERS signals from canola oil. Further purification of the hydrophobic GNPs proved to have higher enhancement and sensitivity, but still poor consistency which is typical of SERS. Monitoring lipid oxidation using Raman and SERS using alternative approaches was the primary objective of the thesis. The purified GNPs were capable of enhancing the canola oil over two weeks, but the poor consistency led to no major trends. Using normal Raman, a triphenylphosphine oxidation reaction was capable of producing a peroxide value correlation in a very simple and rapid manor. Using a gold nanoparticle modified stainless steel wire, the headspace volatiles from canola oil oxidation were able to be enhanced, but with poor consistency. Silver dendrites were used to enhance the canola oil signal but with poor resolution. A combination of silver dendrites and GNPs were used to slightly improve enhancement, but not as strong as GNPs alone.

Plasmonic nanocrystals have a unique ability to support localized surface plasmon resonances and exhibit rich and intriguing optical properties. Engineering plasmonic nanocrystals can maximize their potentials for specific applications. In this dissertation, we developed three unprecedented Au nanorod-based plasmonic nanocrystals through rational design of the crystal shape and/or composition, and successfully demonstrated their applications in light condensation, photothermal conversion, and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The “Au nanorod-Au nanosphere dimer” nanocrystal was synthesized via the ligand-induced asymmetric growth of a Au nanosphere on a Au nanorod. This dimeric nanostructure features an extraordinary broadband optical absorption in the range of 400‒1400nm, and it proved to be an ideal black-body material for light condensation and an efficient solar-light harvester for photothermal conversion. The “Au nanorod (core) @ AuAg alloy (shell)” nanocrystal was built through the epitaxial growth of homogeneously alloyed AuAg shells on Au nanorods by precisely controlled synthesis. The resulting core-shell structured, bimetallic nanorods integrate the merits of the AuAg alloy with the advantages of anisotropic nanorods, exhibiting strong, stable and tunable surface plasmon resonances that are essential for SERS applications in a corrosive environment. The “high-index faceted Au nanorod (core) @ AuPd alloy (shell)” nanocrystal was produced via site-specific epitaxial growth of AuPd alloyed horns at the ends of Au nanorods. The AuPd alloyed horns are bound with high-index side facets, while the Au nanorod concentrates an intensive electric field at each end. This unique configuration unites highly active catalytic sites with strong SERS sites into a single entity and was demonstrated to be ideal for in situ monitoring of Pd-catalyzed reactions by SERS. The synthetic strategies developed here are promising towards the fabrication of novel plasmonic nanocrystals with fascinating properties for nanoplasmonics and nanophotonics.