DARPA funds center for NEMS/MEMS research at Harvard

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - December 19, 2006 – The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded a new multi-institution research initiative in Nano- and Micro-electro-mechanical Systems (NEMS/MEMS) in affiliation with Harvard’s programs in engineering and applied sciences. The three-year program has over $2M in total funding from DARPA and industry partners.

Led by Ken Crozier, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, the Harvard Center for Microfluidic and Plasmonic Systems (MIPS) will carry out fundamental research into surface plasmon (SP) nanostructure design, fabrication, imaging and integration with microfluidic systems. The Center will also bring together experts from a variety of areas, including microfluidics and nanofabrication, biosensors, plasmon devices, optoelectronics, bottom-up nanofabrication, and plasmonic fluorescent sensors.

“Surface plasmons, or SPs, are collective oscillations in the free electron gas that can be excited at the surfaces of materials such as metals. Recent dramatic advances in SP technologies present new opportunities in NEMS/MEMS devices such as microfluidic systems, which involve the manipulation of tiny volumes of liquid,” says Crozier.

Metal nanostructures supporting SPs enable electromagnetic energy to be concentrated into deep sub-wavelength regions. This presents an opportunity for improving the detection sensitivity of biological molecules, such as tagged DNA strands, at very low concentrations. Crozier and his colleagues will investigate a new class of microsystems (MIPS) in which metal nanostructures are combined with microfluidic systems for sample delivery.

The Center will focus on two demonstration vehicles for SP technology. In the first, SP nanostructures are positioned inside microfluidic channels for fluorescent detection of single molecules of DNA. This could potentially enable biotoxins to be detected at very low concentrations. In the second, the interaction of single poliovirus particles with a cell membrane will be observed by monitoring the changes in transmission of a nanohole array sensor. This could be a useful tool in the development of anti-viral drug compounds.

Further, Center participants will undertake a variety of projects related to surface plasmons. These include optical microscopes with improved spatial resolution, numerical modeling of surface plasmons, low-cost nanofabrication methods, understanding the interaction between dye molecules and metals, and optical fiber probes incorporating metallic nanostructures.

Other participating academic/research institutions include the Harvard Medical School, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. Industrial partners include U.S. Genomics, RSoft Design Group, LumArray, and Luminus Devices.

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List of participants of the Harvard Center for Microfluidic and Plasmonic Systems

Jonathan Bernstein, Draper Laboratory
David Carter, Draper Laboratory
Farhad Hakimi, Draper Laboratory
Federico Capasso, Harvard Engineering and Applied Sciences
Ken Crozier, Harvard Engineering and Applied Sciences
James Hogle, Harvard Medical School
Dale Larson, Harvard Medical School
Marc Achermann, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Mark Tuominen, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Jeffrey Krogmeier, U.S. Genomics
Jonathan Larson, U.S. Genomics
Zhengyu Huang, RSoft Design Group
Rajesh Menon, LumArray
Alexei Erchak, Luminus Devices