Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Kowalsky

Besides research in the consolidated fields of organic electronics and glass and fiber drawing technologies in the first funding period of PhoenixD the scope of activities has broadened and has turned the focus on metrology in life sciences. Based on microfluidics, dielectrophoresis, antibodies, plasmonics, and ellipsometry the quantitative detection of bacteria could be considerably gain momentum. As indicated in Fig. 1 test-droplets can be manipulated on a chessboard-like programmable microfluidic chip. To accelerate bacteria collection at the surface electrodes fluid flow due to droplet agitation is simulated by COMSOL. Bacteria are collected and retained at antibodies by dielectrophoresis (Fig.2) and detected by the shift of the plasmon resonance in the top gold electrode by ellipsometry. Detection could be attained up to four orders of magnitude in dilution. The long-term goal is the integration in a fully automated quantitative high throughput screening lab based on a planar motor sample transfer platform.