Chip (IMAGE)

U.S. National Science Foundation

Chip

Caption

Brian Cunningham of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is creating a smartphone-based system to detect and track infectious diseases. The system will detect the presence of specific pathogen DNA sequences with the help of photonic crystals, like the one pictured above. The photonic crystals will be used to enhance the output of fluorescence-based assays. The brilliant colors that are observed reflecting from the photonic crystal are caused by resonant reflection from a periodically modulated nanostructure with features smaller than the visible wavelengths.

Credit

Greg Pluta, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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