DISSEMINATION DISSEMINATION
PUBLICATIONS
Sebastian Golat, Jack J. Kingsley-Smith, Iago Diez, Josep Martinez-Romeu, Alejandro Martínez, and Francisco J. Rodríguez-Fortuño, «Optical dipolar chiral sorting forces and their manifestation in evanescent waves and nanofibers», Phys. Rev. Research 6, 02307 (2024). View publication.
Alex J. Vernon, Sebastian Golat, Claire Rigouzzo, Eugene A. Lim, Francisco J. Rodríguez-Fortuño. «A decomposition of light’s spin angular momentum density.» Light Sci Appl 13, 160 (2024). View publication.
Martínez-Romeu, Josep, Diez, Iago, Golat, Sebastian, Rodríguez-Fortuño, Francisco J. and Martínez, Alejandro. «Longitudinal chiral forces in photonic integrated waveguides to separate particles with realistically small chirality» Nanophotonics, vol. 13, no. 23, 2024, pp. 427 – 289. View publication.
Fan Nan, Francisco J. Rodríguez-Fortuño, Shaohui Yan, Jack J. Kingsley-Smith, Jack Ng, Baoli Yao, Zijie Yan, Xiaohao Xu. «Creating tunable lateral optical forces through multipolar interplay in single nanowires. Nat Commun 14, 6361 (2023). View publication.
PRESS RELEASES
A NEW CHIP TO PRODUCE BIOACTIVE MOLECULES FOR PHARMACEUTICAL AND AGRICULTURAL USE MORE EFFICIENTLY AND COMPETITIVELY.
The Universitat Politècnica de Valencia leads the EU- Funded CHIRALFORCE project
A research team led by the Nanophotonics Technology Center of the Universitat Politècnica de València, in collaboration with researchers from the King’s College London, is designing a new photonic chip that will allow a more efficient fabrication of bioactive molecules for pharmaceutical and agricultural use.
This is the main objective of CHIRALFORCE, a project funded by the European Union under Horizon Europe, coordinated by the UPV in which six more research groups participate (AMOLF, University of Milan, University of Twente, Kings College London, Technical University of Tallinn and Symeres BV).
Chiral molecules have two forms that are similar but not equal, so they cannot be superseded by one the other, just like the right hand and the left hand. This inequality causes both forms of the active compound of chiral pharmaceutical products to have different effects on our bodies. In the same way, both forms interact with polarised light differently.
“This different optic interaction is the phenomenon in which the project focuses on, to achieve the separation of both chiral forms of the molecules”, as the Nanophotonics Technology Center researcher and coordinator of the UPV team, Prof. Alejandro Martínez, explains.
The separation process, key for producing bioactive molecules for pharmaceutical and agricultural use, is currently done by slow and expensive chemical processing. CHIRALFORCE photonic chips will make this process simpler, more efficient, faster, and cheaper.
“The pharmaceutical, agricultural and food industries will benefit the most from the project’s results”, Prof. Alejandro Martínez points out.
“Totally new”
The approach of the CHIRALFORCE chip is “totally new” as it is based on photonic integrated circuits designed to transport chiral light in silicon technology. In this way, the project opens a new path by using integrated silicon devices already used in the past years for low-cost/ high-sensitivity biological and chemical detection to achieve a simple, cheap and fast chiral-optic separation to be used in multiple sectors.
“The use of optical forces in a silicon chip for the separation of enantiopure molecules – with a single chirality-will open totally new routes for the fast separation of essential chemical basic components with applications, for instance, to the development of new medicines”, Prof. Alejandro Martínez concludes.
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