Dr. Luc Dümpelmann studied Nanosciences at the University of Basel, where he focused on developing a cantilever-based optical viscometer with microliter sample consumption to monitor biological aggregation processes.
He did his PhD at the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) in collaboration with the ETH Zurich, where he studied color filters based on plasmonic nanostructures for large-scale applications. Amongst others, he developed one of the first multispectral imaging systems based on plasmonic structures as well as disruptive plasmonic aluminum nanostructures for optical security applications.
Currently, he is a PROBIST postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), where he develops a large field-of-view interference microscopy for measurement of biological samples and material analysis. He is author/co-author of 14 peer-reviewed publications and 2 granted patents.
Large Field-of-view Interferometric Imaging Platform for Sensing Biomarker and Defects
The proposed project is of interdisciplinary nature as it involves photonic engineering applied to bioscience, environmental and industrial monitoring. The main goal is to develop an integrated, compact and low-cost photonic sensor platform for the detection of particulates, material defects, and proteins. The platform will be based on a new interferometric reader that allows detection of tiny quantity (sub-nanometer thickness) of transparent material, offering at the same time large field-of-view (FOV) thanks to the use of lens-free complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor array (ISA).
Such sensitivity and FOV, combined with the low-cost of consumer electronic CMOS-ISA, are essential for point-of-care (PoC) devices for early diagnosis of diseases, which typically require the simultaneous reading of biomarker microarrays with a large number of spots. Furthermore, the technology will be exploited for rapid analysis of particulates and material defects in transparent substrates, which would have a detrimental effect on the production of flexible electronics.
The specific objectives include: (i) development of the large FOV interferometric reader with performance tailored to specific applications. The reader will have to be compact and made of inexpensive components, such as consumer electronics CMOS-ISA (technology used for smartphone cameras), to enable a low cost, easy to integrate and potentially portable sensing platform; (ii) PoC demonstration by measuring microarrays of relevant biomarkers. To this end, plasmonic nano-structures will be utilized to enhance the phase interaction between light and biomaterials (e.g. proteins, bacteria) leading to a higher sensitivity; (iii) detection of defects and particulates in transparent materials, such as glass substrates for organic light emitting diodes (OLED) used in displays of smartphones, tablets, and TV screens.
