Project description
Advancing chiral separation with light
Throughout the pharmaceutical sector and industry, chiral and enantiomeric separation processes are crucial for ensuring the safety of pharmaceutical drugs and agrochemicals for both humans and the environment. Unfortunately, the high cost and long time requirements of these processes have led to around 90 % of chiral pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals being sold as racemic mixtures. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the PiES-on-chip project will develop a revolutionary solution in the form of silicon-based Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) for Photo-induced Enantiometric Separation (PiES). This solution would be mass-producible and more cost-efficient. The project will improve upon current prototypes, introduce novel strategies to enhance interactions, and utilise innovative design approaches to optimise performance.
Objective
Separating the two enantiomeric versions of a chiral molecule is crucial for ensuring the safety of pharmacological drugs and agrochemicals for the human body and the environment. However, the enantiomeric separation process at industrial level through chiral chromatography is costly and slow. As a result, 90% of chiral pharmaceutical drugs and agrochemicals are being sold as racemic mixtures.
The PiEs-on-chip project aims at exploiting enantio-selective optical forces produced in silicon-based Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) to separate enantiomers. The chiral light-matter interaction, between the light guided throughout the PIC and the enantiomers results in a momentum transfer due to optical forces that move the particles of opposite chirality in opposite directions, leading to their Photo-induced Enantiomeric Separation (PiES). The PIC would be easy to mass-produce at low cost per device, thus, making optical enantiomeric separation more viable at industry level.
Guided modes along integrated rectangular waveguides demonstrated inherent transversal and/or longitudinal spin which generates chiral optical forces that could be used for separating chiral particles in the transversal and/or longitudinal direction. Although the use of silicon-based waveguides is promising, they still lack more strength in the optical forces that can exert on smaller particles like molecules, partially due to the simple designs of the tested PICs. This requires new strategies to enhance enantio-selective interactions.
The PiES-on-chip novel approach consists in inversely designing the PIC with topology optimization with the objective of maximizing the produced enantio-selective optical forces. Next, we will fabricate the optimized PIC and measure the generated chiral optical forces with Photo-induced Force Microscopy. Finally, we will deliver the chiral particles over the PIC with a microfluidic layer and experimentally verify the laser-driven enantiomeric-separation on chip.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences mathematics pure mathematics topology
- natural sciences physical sciences optics microscopy
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01
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46022 Valencia
Spain
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