Polarization metasurface detection device for food safety

Polarization Metasurface Detection Device for Food Safety Project Summary The ongoing effort in food safety diagnostics is in constant need of tests, which are more deployable (i.e. lower-cost and more compact), with the utmost accuracy. Metasurface-based optics present an opportunity for high-performance optical fixtures at reduced cost and size to conventional optics. A single metasurface is capable of multiple simultaneous functions (i.e. a lens, diffraction grating, and polarizer). Further, two such lenses can be superimposed in a single surface. Due to only requiring a thickness of less than one micron, metasurface-based optics provide dramatic reductions in size and weight compared with traditional refractive or reflective optics – from 300 grams to under 2 grams, typically. The only material necessities for a metasurface are that it is transparent and possesses a significant difference in index of refraction to that of the external optical medium, often air or an aqueous solution. This allows the opportunity for producing a metasurface from a low cost (i.e. disposable) material such as a patterned Si on silica. As a result, metasurface optics technology offers an opportunity to surpass the performance of traditional optics at reduced cost while maintaining a more compact footprint. The field of optical metasurface biosensing has only very recently been explored. To date, the metasurface “bind and detect” assay is primarily based on a phase shift of transmitted light. This modality, while sensitive, suffers from a noise floor, which is dominated by vibrational noise. For this reason, an investigation into producing a disposable (i.e. low-cost), high-performance metasurface, which uses a change in polarization of light instead of a phase shift, would greatly reduce the noise floor of an optical metasurface assay because the polarization of light is much more independent from the vibration of the medium in comparison to phase. Reducing this noise floor would create an opportunity for a highly sensitive washless “bind and detect” assay with rapid testing (within minutes), high-throughput multiplexing, and portability to ports of entry and food processing plants. To this end, Nanohmics, will fabricate a metasurface wave plate surface, which operates as a high-efficiency infrared polarizer. Forming the base of a 96-well plate, this metasurface will be functionalized through silanization with a unique antibody in each well. Upon binding with an anitibody a pathogen will induce a persistent polarization change in the transmitted light. This will facilitate rapid and deployable sensing of pathogens of interest to food safety with multiplexed delineation.Polarization Metasurface Detection Device for Food Safety Narrative The ongoing effort in food safety diagnostics is in constant need of tests, which are more deployable (i.e. lower-cost and more compact), with the utmost accuracy. Metasurface-based optics offer an opportunity to meet these goals. Nanohmics seeks to develop a polarization metasurface-based biosensor, which is robust against vibrational and background noise, in order to develop a highly sensitive washless “bind and detect” assay with rapid testing (within minutes), high-throughput multiplexing, and portability to ports of entry and food processing plants.