A group of researchers from the Institute of Materials Science at Kaunas University of Technology or KTY, Lithuania, had worked together with researchers from Japan and Latvia to come up with a process that forces more than 300 million metal nanoparticles to assemble by themselves into a regular structure. The self-assembling nanoparticle process can be enhanced from the interaction with light through orders of magnitude. This work that was done by the researchers from Lithuania, Japan, and Latvia can be beneficial in creating very small lasers that can contribute to the diagnostics of a lot of illnesses, including oncological ones.
Researchers from the KTU Institute of Materials Science are studying different kinds of materials that have different levels of molecules and atoms to find ways to rearrange the characteristics of different surfaces effectively; these surfaces are used in fields of medicine and photonics. KTU scientists Professor Sigitas Tamulevicius, Professor Tomas Tamulevicius, and Ph.D. student Mindaugas Juodenas got into the world of smallest metal particles and their interaction with light, as stated in the most recent study.
Juodenas said in a statement that the metal nanoparticles that they are studying are small; in fact, they are so small that a thousand of them could still fit across a human hair. These particles can interact with light resonantly, which is a useful and very interesting phenomenon by itself. If they even constitute a larger, periodic structure, their collective interaction with light will not only become the order of magnitude stronger, but it can also be controlled. This can open a plethora of possibilities for the development of very small photonic devices, like nanolasers.
Self-assembling nanoparticles
Juodenas, one of the co-authors of the research, added that they came up with a method that forces over 300 million metal nanoparticles to self-assemble in a regular process. This makes the nanoparticles interact with light more effectively. The benefit of this process is an opportunity to create biological sensors that are very sensitive, and that can detect every single molecule. With this biological sensor, the diagnostics of different illnesses would become possible at an early stage.
Early cancer diagnosis
The achievement of the researchers from KTU can also benefit the new cancer treatment method, called the photothermal treatment, that is currently being developed and distributed worldwide. Photothermal treatment means that the heat made through nanoparticles resonant interaction with light is applied to a small area in order to kill cancer cells without affecting the other tissues in the body of the patient. This treatment requires laser technology and a device that features the nanoparticle arrays that are proposed by KTU researchers that may allow for the development of implantable nanolasers, which would then help to redirect the light into harmful cells more efficiently.
This improvement in photothermal can benefit cancer patients that are still in the early stages of their diagnosis as it can kill the illness-causing cells. Although photothermal treatment has an impressive effectivity rate, it does not have the ability to detect cancer-causing cells before it forms. The researchers from KTU are planning to debut their discovery, and after improvements for future use has been done, it could be tested worldwide.