Engineers have harnessed quantum physics to detect the presence of biomolecules without the need for an external light source, overcoming a significant obstacle to the use of optical biosensors in healthcare.
By harnessing a quantum phenomenon called inelastic electron tunneling, researchers have created a biosensor that requires only a steady flow of electrons — in the form of an applied electrical voltage — to illuminate and detect molecules at the same time.
At the heart of the team’s innovation is a dual functionality: their nanostructure’s gold layer is a metasurface, meaning it exhibits special properties that create the conditions for quantum tunneling and control the resulting light emission. This control is made possible thanks to the metasurface’s arrangement into a mesh of gold nanowires, which act as nanoantennas to concentrate the light at the nanometer volumes required to detect biomolecules efficiently. (Image credit: EPFL)
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