It has been carried out by the Optics group, led by Fernando Moreno and Francisco González of FOTOGLASS, in collaboration with the US Army and Duke University
The projectDevelopment of new nanosensors for biological applicationshas been the winner of the 2011 'Juan María Pares' Research Awards of the Social Council of the University of Cantabria. The study was led by Pablo Albella, Borja García, José María Saiz, Francisco González and Fernando Moreno, from the Optics research group (Department of Applied Physics).
The aim of the prize-winning work - carried out in collaboration with the ARL (US Army Research Laboratory) and Duke University (USA) - is the development and control of new biological sensors based on metallic nanoparticles with a response in the ultraviolet range.
The use of gallium as a novel metallic material was proposed, which has advantages over its competitors (silver or aluminium), such as its low degree of oxidation and the relative simplicity it offers for fabricating hemispherical nanoparticles on substrates that respond adequately in both the visible-infrared and ultraviolet ranges.
In addition to developing methods for the fabrication of gallium nanoparticles, simulation models and other tools have been developed to optimise this technology and make it cheaper to manufacture.
The quality of the work presented has the seal of USAITC-A (United States Army International Technology Center-Atlantic), co-funder of the research, and was endorsed by prestigious researchers: Naomí Halas, from Rice University (USA) -considered one of the most prestigious researchers worldwide in the field of nanoscience and a pioneer in the research of nanosensors for the early detection of cancer; Andreas Berger, research director of Nano-GUNE; Lluis Torner, director of the Institute of Photonic Sciences of Catalonia; Ricardo Aroca, from the University of Windsor (Canada), a pioneer in Surface Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) techniques applied to nanosensors; and Gorden Videen, from ARL, a leading researcher in the field of light scattering.
The most relevant results of this research have also been published in the journal Nanoletters, the world's leading journal in its field along with Nature Nanotechnology.