Immobilization of photosynthetic cultures has been used to generate biofuels and high value compounds through direct conversion of CO2 and water using sunlight. Compared with suspended cultures, immobilized bacteria can achieve much higher densities resulting in greater areal productivity. Limitations exist however, on the density that can be reached without compromising access to light and other nutrients.
In this thesis an optofluidic approach to overcoming the challenge of light delivery to high density cultures of cyanobacteria is described and proof of concept experiments presented. This approach uses optical waveguides to deliver light to cells through bacterial interaction with the evanescent field and is tailored to meet each cell's need for light and nutrients. Experiments presented here demonstrate biofilm proliferation in the presence of evanescent fields. Illumination of surfaces by surface plasmon enhanced evanescent fields is also shown to be an effective and potentially useful technique to grow biofilms within optofluidic architectures.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/33484 |
| Date | 26 November 2012 |
| Creators | Ooms, Matthew |
| Contributors | Sinton, David |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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