New Nanochemistry Technique Encases Single Molecules in Microdroplets
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 - 17:35
in Physics & Chemistry
(PhysOrg.com) -- Inventing a useful new tool for creating chemical reactions between single molecules, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have employed microfluidics -- the manipulation of fluids at the microscopic scale -- to make microdroplets that contain single molecules of interest. By combining this new microfluidic "droplet-on-demand" method with "optical tweezers" that could merge multiple droplets and cause their molecular contents to react, the research may ultimately lead to a compact, integrated setup for obtaining single-molecule information on the structure and function of important organic materials, such as proteins, enzymes, and DNA.