High Capacity Nano-optical Diffraction Barcode Tagging for Biological and Chemical Applications

摘要

We describe a new non-contact high capacity optical tagging technique for encoding small beads, based on the use of nanostructured barcodes. The tags are generated from a number of superimposed diffraction gratings. With one-dimensional diffraction, capacity for up to 68,000 distinguishable tags has been demonstrated on a glass substrate, with a theoretical capacity of up to 10~9 tags. Extension into two dimensions increases this limit to 10~(18) tags. Manufacture of such tags on a polymer material compatible with biochemistry has also been demonstrated, which allows reading in a high throughput microfluidic system.