Optical Cavity Enhanced Nanoscale Gas Chromatography

University Of Texas At Arlington, Arlington TX

Investigators

Abstract

Proposal Title: Optical Cavity Enhanced Nanoscale Gas Chromatography Proposal Goal: The research aims to pioneer a study on the development of an ultra-compact nanoscale gas chromatography platform with integrated on-column photonic crystal cavity-enhanced Fano resonance nanosensor arrays to achieve ultrafast and highly sensitive gas analysis. Nontechnical Abstract: Rapid and in-situ chemical vapor analysis provides vital information in many applications such as environmental monitoring, healthcare, industrial and workplace safety, and defense and national security. Unfortunately, most gas sensors lack the detection specificity, makes it challenging to analyze real-world samples that usually contain tens to hundreds of volatile organic compounds. Although recent advancement in micro-gas chromatography (GC) demonstrates great potential in the development of powerful portable gas analysis devices, it still remains a grand challenge to achieve ultrafast separation and detection while maintaining adequate separation resolution and small footprint for effective gas analysis. This research aims to develop a nanoscale gas chromatography device that provides unprecedented gas analysis speed, separation capability, sensitivity, ultra-compact size, and system scalability. The success of this research will lead to the development of wearable and personalized gas sensors that can be easily accepted and accessible by the general public for various applications. Scaling from micro-GC to nano-GC presents a range of scientific and engineering challenges, including the column design, polymer coating, mismatch between the nanoscale column and the micro-scale detection/sensing scheme, high spectrally and spatially resolved optical sensors, and system integration architectures. In addition to technical advances, fundamental study of gas separation mechanisms and processes in a nanofluidic channel provides unique insight into the molecular interaction and gas dynamics within nano-sized confinement, which will not only be important for discovery of new sensing and separation mechanisms, but can also be extended to many seemingly unrelated areas (such as gas exchange processes in the lung). The knowledge generated through the proposed project will be instrumental to the development of new techniques and tools to push a plethora of engineering fields to a new frontier. The proposed project offers extensive interdisciplinary education and training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students. The research outcomes will also be integrated into the outreach activities with local K-12 schools and communities to attract students to STEM careers. Technical Abstract: The objective of this project is to pioneer a study on the development of a nano-GC platform with integrated on-column photonic crystal cavity-enhanced Fano resonance nanosensor arrays to achieve portable, quantitative, ultra-fast, and high separation resolution volatile organic compounds analysis in complex gas mixtures. In the proposed work, nanofluidic channels are directly fabricated and integrated with the coupled photonic crystal slab Fano resonance filters, offering a unique capability in studying the gas separation in the nanoscale confined environment. The specific research tasks include: (1) Fundamental study of gas separation mechanisms and processes in a nanofluidic channel; (2) Development of the photonic crystal cavity enhanced sensor array; (3) On-chip integration of nano-GC channels with photonic crystal sensor arrays; and (4) Prototyping of a nano-GC system for ultra-fast analysis of a panel of volatile organic compounds in complex gas mixtures.