All-Optical Biophotonic and Microfluidic Circuits for Photo-thermal Applications

We propose a photonic biochip that combines optical and microfluidic channels to exploit gold nanorods (GNRs) potential in developing light-assisted antimicrobial therapies. The proposed chip is obtained by coupling two separately processed PolyDiMethylSiloxane (PDMS) substrates in which microfluidic channels (MC), conveying biological fluid flow, and optical waveguides (OW), confining near infrared (NIR) light, interact. Light is used to activate plasmonic resonances in GNRs dispersed in a film deposited on the functionalized PDMS substrates. This paper uses experimental measurements and numerical simulations based on Finite Element Method (FEM) software tools to optimize the final design in terms of suitable GNR irradiation, dimensions, aspect ratio, density, and distribution.