Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lukas Zeininger

Timothy Manning Swager

Mathias Kolle

Hadley Sikes Johnson

Eric Alexander Miller

Ki-Joo Sung

Kosuke Yoshinaga

Qifan Zhang

Sara N Nagelberg

Kent Harvey

Myles Herbert

Embodiments described herein may be useful in the detection of analytes. The systems and methods may allow for a relatively simple and rapid way for detecting analytes such as chemical and/or biological analytes and may be useful in numerous applications including sensing, food manufacturing, medical diagnostics, performance materials, dynamic lenses, water monitoring, environmental monitoring, detection of proteins, detection of DNA, among other applications. For example, the systems and methods described herein may be used for determining the presence of a contaminant such as bacteria (e.g., detecting pathogenic bacteria in food and water samples which helps to prevent widespread infection, illness, and even death). Advantageously, the systems and methods described herein may not have the drawbacks in current detection technologies including, for example, relatively high costs, long enrichment steps and analysis times, and/or the need for extensive user training. Another advantageous feature provided by the systems and methods described herein includes fabrication in a relatively large scale. In some embodiments, the systems and methods may be used in conjunction with a detector including handheld detectors incorporated with, for example, smartphones (e.g., for the on-site detection of analytes such as pathogenic bacteria).

Systems including Janus droplets with binding moieties for a virus, a pathogen or a bacterium

Embodiments described herein may be useful for optofluidic devices. For example, optofluidic devices using dynamic fluid lens materials represent an ideal platform to create versatile, reconfigurable, refractive optical components. For example, the articles described herein may be useful as fluidic tunable compound micro-lenses. Such compound micro-lenses may be composed of two or more components (e.g., two or more inner phases) that form stable bi-phase emulsion droplets in outer phases (e.g., aqueous media). In some embodiments, the articles described herein may be useful as light emitting droplets. Advantageously, the plurality of droplets may be configured such that light rays may modified (e.g., via stimulation of the droplets, exposure to an analyte such as a pathogen) to have a detectable emission intensity and/or angle of maximum emission intensity under a particular set of conditions.

Light emitting droplets and related methods

Growing community of inventors

Berlin, Germany

Lukas Zeininger