ASSEMBLY AND METHOD FOR DETECTING CHANGES TO THE OPTICAL PATH LENGTH IN A NANO CAPILLARY CHANNEL

摘要

The invention relates to an assembly and a method for detecting changes to the optical path length in a nano capillary channel, in particular for detecting nano volume elements. The approaches with fluorescence-labelled species forming the basis of the fluorescence correlation spectroscopy shall be extended to the examination of unlabelled species, an improved parallelisability shall be made possible, and precise, localised detections into the sub-micrometer range and sub-Abbe limit range shall be provided. The problem addressed by the invention is solved by a multi-layer chip in microfluid technology comprising three planar layers (1, 17 and 18), which are embodied as an optically transparent detection medium (1), an optically transparent embedding medium (17), containing at least one plasmonic nanostructure (2), and a carrier medium (18) with a capillary channel (4), which is introduced into the surface adjacent to the embedding medium (17) and which has a fluid inflow (5) and outflow (6), wherein the capillary channel (4) is embodied as a reflective surface (3) on its side opposite the plasmonic nanostructures (2), wherein the optical path length from the plasmonic nanostructures (2) as light source to the reflective surface (3) in the capillary channel (4) under consideration of the optical refractive indices is 0.5 times or N * 0.5 times the wavelength of the maximum constructive interference, with N being an integer greater than or equal to 1.