Surface plasmon resonance imaging by holographic enhanced mapping.

We designed, constructed and tested a holographic surface plasmon resonance (HoloSPR) objective-based microscope for simultaneous amplitude-contrast and phase-contrast surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRi). SPRi is a widely spread tool for label-free detection of changes in refractive index and concentration, as well as mapping of thin films. Currently, most of the SPR sensors rely on the detection of amplitude or phase changes of light. Despite the high sensitivities achieved so far, each technique alone has a limited detection range with optimal sensitivity. Here we use a high numerical aperture objective that avoids all the limitations due to the use of a prism-based configuration, yielding highly magnified and distortion-free images. Holographic reconstructions of SPR images and real-time kinetic measurements are presented to show the capability of HoloSPR to provide a versatile imaging method for high-throughput SPR detection complementary to conventional SPR techniques.

Easy Printing of High Viscous Microdots by Spontaneous Breakup of Thin Fibers.

Electrohydrodynamic jetting is emerging as a successful technique for printing inks with resolutions well beyond those offered by conventional inkjet printers. However, the variety of printable inks is still limited to those with relatively low viscosities (typically <20 mPa s) due to nozzle clogging problems. Here, we show the possibility of printing ordered microdots of high viscous inks such as poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) by exploiting the spontaneous breakup of a thin fiber generated through nozzle-free pyro-electrospinning. The PLGA fiber is deposited onto a partially wetting surface, and the breakup is achieved simply by applying an appropriate thermal stimulation, which is able to induce polymer melting and hence a mechanism of surface area minimization due to the Plateau-Rayleigh instability. The results show that this technique is a good candidate for extending the printability at the microscale to high viscous inks, thus extending their applicability to additional applications, such as cell behavior under controlled morphological constraints.