Brilliant Dust: Nanoparticle Doped On-Chip Microplasmas for Fluorescent Detection of Biomolecules

This paper reports on Brilliant Dust, a new nanoparticle-doped on chip microplasma (small-scale electric discharge) device. By changing the nanoparticle species, a multichannel, tunable on-chip Vis/UV optical source is enabled. This source is constructed on a micro-sandblasted glass structure with metal electrodes that serve to confine and energize vacuum and atmospheric microplasmas. Also confined in these cavities are metal-oxide nanoparticles, which as the microplasma is energized charge negatively, levitate, and dope the spectral discharge, creating a dusty microplasma. An array of these on-chip optical sources, doped with different nanoparticles produces a set of tunable, stable visible-to-UV light emitting optical sources. The UV source, doped with chrome-oxide nanoparticles, is utilized to fluoresce thermo-electron M1420MP bio-tagging dye held in an off-chip reservoir, illustrating potential use in a variety of lab-on-a-chip applications.