Two days ago, I noted that I’d never encountered bimetallic nanoparticles before reading about the ‘Christmas decorations’ created by a Mexico/US research team (my Dec. 6, 2010 posting). Live and learn. Here’s another bimetallic (gold and silver this time too) news item on Nanowerk,

Shrink Nanotechnologies, Inc. (“Shrink”), an innovative nanotechnology company developing products and licensing opportunities in the solar energy industry, medical diagnostics and sensors and biotechnology research and development tools businesses, announced today that Shrink’s MetalFluor™ technology was studied, reported on and made the front cover of the November issue of Applied Physics Letters (“Bimetallic nanopetals for thousand-fold fluorescence enhancements”). [the article is behind a paywall]

I was most interested to note that at least one of the authors is a researcher associated with the company that issued the news release trumpeting the article in Applied Physics Letters. From the news item on Nanowerk,

The Company’s technology and the work being performed by Dr. Michelle Khine, our scientific founder, continues to gain high praise from leading academic journals. [emphases mine] The studies relate to potential commercial applications of this technology. Of note, the article states, “Because we have a range of nanostructure and nanogap sizes, we can ensure that we can achieve huge fluorescent enhancements on our substrate. These advantages show great potential for low-cost biomedical sensing at single molecular levels at physiological concentrations.” The Company believes that this article is further evidence that certain medical diagnostics tests, a multi-billion dollar annual industry in the United States alone, can provide physicians, patients and other medical professionals with better results using lower quantities of specimens using MetalFluor™ technologies.

Here’s more about possible uses for the technology cited in the article in Applied Physics Letters (citation: Bimetallic nanopetals for thousand-fold fluorescence enhancements by Chi-Cheng Fu1, Giulia Ossato, Maureen Long, Michelle A. Digman, Ajay Gopinathan, Luke P. Lee, Enrico Gratton, and Michelle Khine in vol. 97, issue no. 20, Nov. 15, 2010),

Our method can be easily integrated with microfluidic devices to combine with high throughput lab-on-chip techniques. Importantly, because of–not in spite of–the “variability” in our substrate, we do not need to choose an esoteric dye such that it would match our plasmon resonance. Because we have a range of nanostructure and nanogap sizes, we can ensure that we can achieve huge fluorescence enhancements on our substrate. These advantages show great potential for low-cost biomedical sensing at single molecular levels at physiological concentrations.

The company Khine founded is very interesting from an organizational perspective (the news item on Nanowerk),

Shrink is a first of its kind FIGA™ organization. FIGA companies bring together diverse contributions from leaders in the worlds of finance, industry, government and academia. [emphases mine] Shrink’s solutions, including its diverse polymer substrates, nano-devices and biotech research tools, among others, are designed to be ultra-functional and mechanically superior in the solar energy, environmental detection, stem cell and biotechnology markets. The Company’s products are based on a pre-stressed plastic called NanoShrink™, and on a patent-pending manufacturing process called the ShrinkChip Manufacturing Solution™. Shrink’s unique materials and manufacturing solution represents a new paradigm in the rapid design, low-cost fabrication and manufacture of nano-scale devices for numerous significant markets.

I can’t make much of this academic/business hybrid but I am intrigued and will watch its progress with some interest. You can visit the Shrink Nanotechnologies website here.