A new sensor on a chip can detect chemical reactions within liquids in real time.
The chip could be submerged in a pipeline or used to measure tiny samples down to a microliter. In a new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers used the fingertip-sized chip to watch proteins denature. The device can be tweaked to monitor any number of reactions, which could be useful in industries like pharmaceuticals and food science, says study author Borislav Hinkov, a physicist at the Institute of Solid State Electronics & Center for Micro- and Nanostructures, at the Vienna Univ. of Technology.
“Fundamentally, this is something that can be used whenever you want to measure some dynamic changes in the liquid,” Hinkov says.
At the heart of the device is a sensor that can detect light in the mid-infrared range. Molecules absorb some wavelengths within this range and let others pass through, depending on the shape of the molecule. By measuring the absorption, it’s possible to...
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