In 2012, 13% of all deaths in the EU were attributable to environmental pollution, e.g. in the form of aerosols. Another major source of pollution ubiquitous in our modern society is plastics. Their long-term accumulation and fragmentation into nanoplastics, which can leach toxic, carcinogenic, or endocrine disrupting additives, is cause for increased concern. Simultaneously, more and more nanoparticles are used in drug delivery or as therapeutics. There currently exist no methods that allow for the sampling of extremely low amount of materials, such as aerosols, nanoplastics, or nanopharmaceuticals, and simultaneously provide characterization data for their identification.
Current state-of-the-art methods require environmental samples to be brought back to the laboratory, extracted from filters and further analyzed with specialized equipment and personnel or very low concentrations of samples to be analyzed for several hours in order to obtain a stable signal. The delay in obtaining an answer can have serious detrimental health, economic, and societal effects. Furthermore, the elaborate analytical procedure massively limits the amount of samples taken and mainly reduces them to spot checks only. Therefore, contaminations of various kinds are not detected at all.
But what if we could detect and identify airborne pollution and nanoparticles directly in the field, workplace, or home and in real time? What if we could identify the sources and extent of nanoplastic pollution at remote locations? What if we could speed up nanopharmaceuticals drug discovery and improve quality control? In the NEMILIES project, we applied the nanomechanical point of view to the world of optics to create a radically new nanomaterial and nanoparticle detector aclled EMILIE. EMILIE is an innovative Mid- to Far-IR (also known as THz) analyser based on unique nanoelectromechanical sensing (NEMS) technology, which allows the sampling and chemical analysis of nano-sized samples available in limited quantities. Our innovative technology fills a methodology and technology gap by bringing frontrunner ultra-sensitive characterization methods to the analysis of aerosols, nanoplastics, nanopharmaceuticals, thin films, biomolecules, and more.
