Enzymatic synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles.

We report the first in vitro enzymatic synthesis of paramagnetic and antiferromagnetic nanoparticles toward magnetic ELISA reporting. With our procedure, alkaline phosphatase catalyzes the dephosphorylation of l-ascorbic-2-phosphate, which then serves as a reducing agent for salts of iron, gadolinium, and holmium, forming magnetic precipitates of Fe45±14Gd5±2O50±15 and Fe42±4Ho6±4O52±5. The nanoparticles were found to be paramagnetic at 300 K and antiferromagnetic under 25 K.

Transmissive Nanohole Arrays for Massively-Parallel Optical Biosensing.

A high-throughput optical biosensing technique is proposed and demonstrated. This hybrid technique combines optical transmission of nanoholes with colorimetric silver staining. The size and spacing of the nanoholes are chosen so that individual nanoholes can be independently resolved in massive parallel using an ordinary transmission optical microscope, and, in place of determining a spectral shift, the brightness of each nanohole is recorded to greatly simplify the readout.

Microretroreflector-sedimentation immunoassays for pathogen detection.

Point-of-care detection of pathogens is medically valuable but poses challenging trade-offs between instrument complexity and clinical and analytical sensitivity. Here we introduce a diagnostic platform utilizing lithographically fabricated micron-scale forms of cubic retroreflectors, arguably one of the most optically detectable human artifacts, as reporter labels for use in sensitive immunoassays. We demonstrate the applicability of this novel optical label in a simple assay format in which retroreflector cubes are first mixed with the sample.

Suspended, micron-scale corner cube retroreflectors as ultra-bright optical labels.

Corner cube retroreflectors are objects with three mutually perpendicular reflective surfaces that return light directly to its source and are therefore extremely bright and easy to detect. In this work, we have fabricated suspended corner cube retroreflectors, 5 microns in size, consisting of a transparent epoxy core and three surfaces coated with gold as ultra-bright labels for use in a rapid, low-labor diagnostic platform. The authors have demonstrated that individual cubes are easily imaged using low-cost, low numerical aperture objectives in suspension and that they remain suspended over long periods of time.

Improved photocatalytic degradation of textile dye using titanium dioxide nanotubes formed over titanium wires.

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanotubes formed by anodization over titanium wires show a significant improvement in photocatalytic activity compared to the nanotubes formed over foils. This is evident when the fractional conversion of a textile dye, methyl orange, increased from 19% over a foil to 40% over wires in the presence of nanotubes of identical dimensions illuminated over the same geometrical area. Higher degradation rates with Pt-TiO2 nanotubes over foils are matched by the Pt-free TiO2 nanotubes over the wires.