Often researchers will need to create mixing in the systems ultramage volume. However, be omitted in such capacity is not obtained even the most thin needle. Such microreactors are important for the development of new drugs, the experiments, and even diagnosis of diseases. Now Russian scientists together with their Czech colleagues suggested to use for solution of this problem the light. About his discovery, the scientists reported in the journal Advanced Science.
The microreactors or lab on a chip today are becoming increasingly popular among researchers. These small containers with a special surface structure typically have a size of several cubic millimetres to several cubic centimeters. Despite the size, these devices allow you to quickly analyze blood and carry out experiments with small amounts of compounds.
However, in the work of the laboratories on a chip is a serious problem to control their speed of mixing is practically impossible using traditional methods. To deprive the microreactors of this drawback, researchers from the ITMO University, together with colleagues from the Czech Republic have proposed a new method, which is based on hashing, using light pressure.
The concept of light pressure was made in the late nineteenth century the British scientist James Maxwell. Then it was proved by Russian Explorer Pyotr Lebedev. The strength of this light emission is quite small, and then she are unable to find the application. Now this area deals with the whole field of physics —optomechanical. She uses light to manipulate living cells and the tiniest particles of matter. Now it turned out that by using light pressure you can also stir liquids.
Using the latest advances in optomechanics researchers from St. Petersburg have created nanoantenna is a small silicon cube with sides of about two hundred nanometers. This device can control the radiation that falls on it. It is, according to the researchers, converting light of circular polarization in the optical vortex.
In addition nanoantenna researchers have proposed to launch into the liquid a small amount of gold nanoparticles. They are captured by an optical vortex and start spinning around the cube of silicon, mixing the liquid. The size of this system is so small that it could enhance the diffusion of a hundred times at one end of the microreactor, almost without affecting what happens in another.
