Photonic devices for Photo-thermal Applications

Several diseases such as cancer, pathogenic illnesses and water disinfection can be fought at nanoscale. In this presentation, we propose a simple and effective design that combines optical and microfluidic channels to allow the investigation of gold nanorods (GNR) in the development of light-assisted antimicrobial therapies in a portable and biocompatible microsystem. Our approach is based on plasmonic photo-thermal therapy (PPTT) combined with GNRs has also been proven very effective against bacterial strains resistant to standard antibiotic treatments. Our design is aimed to develop a compact, portable, biophotonic single-chip microsystem for bacterial killing or nanosensing. Microstructures including PDMS microfluidic channels will be presented in which liquid crystals can be also used to tune peaks of absorption of localized surface plasmon resonances. A simple and effective design which combines optical and microfluidic channels to allow accurate investigation of gold nanorods potential in the development of light assisted antimicrobial therapies or water disinfection in a portable and biocompatible microsystems will be described.

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