Volume 1, Issue 1

Bacterial rotational motor complexes that propel flagellated bacteria possess unique properties like their size of a few nanometres and the ability of selfreproduction that have led to various exciting applications including biohybrid nano-machines. One mandatory prerequisite to utilize bacterial nano motors in fluid applications is the ability to transfer force and torque to the fluid, which usually can be achieved by attachment of the bacterial cell to adequate surfaces. Additionally, for optimal transfer of force or torque, precise control of the position down to the single cell level is of utmost importance. Based on a PIV (particle image velocimetry) evaluation of the induced flow of single bacteria,we propose and demonstrate attachment of arbitrary patterns of motile bacterial cells in a fast light-based two-step process for the first time to our knowledge. First, these cells are pre-structured by holographic optical tweezers and then attached to a homogeneous, polystyrene-coated surface. In contrast to the few approaches that have been implemented up to now and which rely on pre-structured surfaces, our scheme allows for precise control on a single bacterium level, is versatile, interactive and has low requirements with respect to the surface preparation.

Laser light is injected in a free standing horizontal draining soap film through the glass frame sustaining the film. Two propagation regimes are clearly identified depending on the film thickness. At the beginning of the drainage, the soap film behaves as a multimode-one dimensional optofiuidic waveguide. In particular, we observe that the injected light creates a bottleneck in the film and part of the injected light is refracted leading to whiskers. At the end of the drainage where the film thickness is below 1μm, there is a strong selection among the various possible optical modes in the film, and part of the light is defiected. This leads to a self selection of the mode propagation inside the film.

A femtosecond laser at 800 nm was used to create micro-fluidic circuits on lithium niobate (LiNbO3) substrates by means of laser ablation, using different scanning velocities (100-500 μm/s) and laser pulse energies (1-20 μJ). The T-junction geometry was exploited to create on y-cut LiNbO3 crystals a droplet generator, whose microfluidic performance was characterized in a wide range of droplet generation frequencies, from few Hz to about 1 kHz.

Hybrid organic/inorganic materials based on combination of polymers and inorganic nanoparticles (NP) attract considerable attention due to their advantageous electrical, optical, or mechanical properties. Recently it was reported that doping photopolymers with nanoparticles allows to achieve near 100% net diffraction efficiency in case of conventional holographic recording. Thus, we have synthesized novel organic/inorganic composite materials by incorporating MFI (Mordenite Framework Inverted) type zeolite nanoparticles in an amorphous side-chain azopolymer. A considerable improvement of the photoresponse in thin films of these composite materials has been observed compared to the non-doped samples - nearly 25% increase of the saturated value of the birefringence.Moreover the photoinduced birefringence is stable in time which allows these materials to be used as media for diffractive optical elements with high efficiency and unique polarization properties.

Multimode interferometers are coming of age both as sensors and components of quantum circuits.Here we investigate an interferometer based on a porous thinfilm sensor of refractive index of fluids. Eigenmode analysis is used to identify effective single- and multi-mode sensing regimes and the corresponding realizations of interferometer. A general measure in a form of Fisher information is introduced to describe the impact of the film porosity on sensitivity and nonlinearity of the interferometer. As high sensitivity relies on formation of a highly peaked mode in the film, a parallel with plasmonic sensors is drawn. Close correlations between the sensor nonlinearity, mode profile and the shape of Fisher information function indicate the potential of this measure in describing complex non-Gaussian multimode structures

In the present work, we report on the preparation of microgels of chitosan crosslinked with sodium tripolyphosphate (TPP) employing the microfluidics technique (MF). To achieve this, several flow focusing geometries were designed and tested. As a first step, a two-inlet flow focusing geometry was employed to emulsify chitosan and the crosslinking reaction was carried out offchip. This procedure did not allow separating the resulting chitosan microgels due to an incomplete crosslinking reaction. A crosslinking reaction on-chip was studied as an alternative. A four-inlet flow focusing geometrywas designed in which three dispersed phases, chitosan 0.25% (w/v), TPP 0.05% (w/v) and acetic acid 1% (v/v) and an continuous phase mineral oil + Span 80 (3% w/v) were employed. The flow rates for the continuous phase were varied from 6.7 to 11.7 μL/min and chitosan microgels were successfully obtained with average diameters from 68 to 42 μm. The average size of the microgels outside the MF device decreased up to ~21% with respect to their size inside the MF device due to partial expulsion of water from the microgels when complete gelation occurred.

We present an optofluidic device for switching light from multiple inputs to one common output. The device uses a microfluidic channel filled with high index of refraction oil as a waveguide, and moves low refractive index interruptions in the form of aqueous droplets through the channel. Whenever a droplet passes one of the optical inputs, this specific input is switched through to the output. This produces a running switching of one output following the other creating a 8x1 multiplexer.