Rotational Drift Spectroscopy for Magnetic Particle Ensembles

Magnetic particles have become a core ingredient for many applications in chemistry, biology, and medical diagnostics, e.g., as a basis for bioanalytical methods or as tracer material for medical imaging. This paper presents a new method called rotational drift spectroscopy (RDS) which uses rotating magnetic fields for measuring the properties of magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) in liquid suspensions. The RDS signal is based on the nonlinear rotational drift behavior of MNPs in rotating magnetic fields, which is highly dependent on the properties of the MNPs as well as their interaction with the environment. This dependency allows detecting the binding of functionalized MNPs with, e.g., proteins, viruses, or cells with potentially very high sensitivity. This paper presents first experiments demonstrating rotational drift behavior on aggregated magnetic particle ensembles and the corresponding experimental setup.