Nanoscale sensing method has potential in medical treatment

These super-bright, photostable nanocrystals are said to enable a new approach to highly advanced sensing technologies using optical fibres.

This discovery, by a team of researchers from Macquarie University, the University of Adelaide, and Peking University, is said to open the way for rapid localisation and measurement of cells within a living environment at the nanoscale, such as the changes to a single living cell in the human body in response to chemical signals.

Published in Nature Nanotechnology, the research outlines a new approach to advanced sensing that has been facilitated by bringing together a specific form of nanocrystal, a so-called SuperDot, with a special kind of optical fibre that enables light to interact with nanoscale volumes of liquid.

‘Up until now, measuring a single nanoparticle would have required placing it inside a very bulky and expensive microscope,’ said Prof Tanya Monro, director of the University of Adelaide’s Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) and ARC Australian Laureate Fellow. ‘For the first time, we’ve been able to detect a single nanoparticle at one end of an optical fibre from the other end. That opens up all sorts of possibilities in sensing.’