Events

Plasmonic Metasurface as an Imaging Device: Multi-spectral Infrared Microscopy with Vibrational Contrast

Gennady Shvets, Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics, Cornell University

Presented in Goergen 101 and on Zoom

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Abstract

The ability to distinguish between different states of an individual cell, as well as between different types of cells, is crucial for a variety of fundamental and clinical life sciences applications. This is particularly true for heterogeneous cell populations often observed in physiological contexts (e.g., drug-resistant sub-populations of cells and bacteria can coexist with the drug-sensitive population). Therefore, the ability to image cells with deeply sub-cellular resolution is very important. In this talk, I will explain how plasmonic metasurfaces can be used for high-content imaging using vibrational contrast. I will describe an experimental technique developed in our lab – Metasurface-enabled Inverted Reflected-light Infrared Microscopy (MIRIAM) – used to produce chemical images of evolving live cells with diffraction-limited spatial resolution. By interrogating the natural chemical bonds of the biomolecules (proteins, lipids, carbohydrates) comprising a live cell, MIRIAM is an ultimate label-free high-content imaging assay that can be carried out over long periods of time. By integrating metasurfaces with multi-well titer plates, we enable high-throughput molecular imaging assays capable of detecting cell responses over physiologically-relevant long periods of time, including: cell motility and adhesion, differentiation, and metabolic processes. Different types of metasurfaces used in this study will be described, including flat two-dimensional, three-dimensional meta-on-dielectric, and multi-resonant plasmonic metasurfaces.

Biography

Gennady Shvets is a J. Preston Levis Professor of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University. He received his PhD in Physics from MIT in 1995. Before moving to Cornell in 2016, he was on the physics faculty of the University of Texas at Austin for 12 years. His research interests at the intersection of nanotechnologies and biophotonics include bio-spectroscopy, chemical imaging of live cells, and microfluidics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), Optical Society of America (OSA), and SPIE.

His most recent work deals with the applications of metamaterials and plasmonics to biosensing and molecular fingerprinting of proteins and live cells using metamaterial arrays. He is particularly interested in the integration of plasmonic metasurfaces with various applications-specific platforms such as microfluidics and optical fibers. His group is exploring the nano-bio interface between plasmonic structures and living cells. Recently, he demonstrated the first metasurface-based tool for studying the effects of pharmaceutical stimuli on living cells in real time, including drug effects on cellular morphology, motility, and metabolism.