Home > Press > Rice Scientists Make First Nanoscale pH Meter
Abstract:
Tiny, High-resolution Sensors Could Probe Living Cells, Tissues
Using unique nanoparticles that convert laser light into useful information, Rice University scientists have created the world's first nano-sized pH meter.
The discovery, which appears online this week in the journal Nano Letters, presents biologists with the first potential means of measuring accurate pH changes over a wide pH range in real-time inside living tissue and cells.
"Almost every biologist I speak with comes up with one or two things they'd like to measure with this," said lead researcher Naomi Halas, the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, professor of chemistry and director of Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP).
For example, pH may be useful in determining whether or not some cancer tumors are malignant. With current methods, a piece of the tumor would need to be physically removed via biopsy – a painful and invasive procedure – and visually evaluated under a microscope. Halas said LANP's new nano-pH meter could be used instead as an "optical biopsy" to measure the pH inside the tumor with nothing more invasive than an injection.
Halas's LANP team created the pH sensor using nanoshells, optically tuned nanoparticles invented by Halas. Each nanoshell contains a tiny core of non-conducting silica that's covered by a thin shell of metal, usually gold. Many times smaller than living cells, nanoshells can be produced with great precision and the metal shells can be tuned to absorb or scatter specific wavelengths of light.
To form the pH sensor, Halas' team coated the nanoshells with pH-sensitive molecules called paramercaptobenzoic acid, or pMBA. When placed in solutions of varying acidity and illuminated, the nanoshell-molecule device provides small but easily detectable changes in the properties of the scattered light that, when "decoded," can be used to determine the pH of the nanodevice's local environment to remarkably high accuracy. Inspired by techniques normally applied to image recognition, the team formulated an efficient statistical learning procedure to produce the device output, achieving an average accuracy of 0.1 pH units.
The term "pH" was coined by the Danish chemist Søren Sørensen in 1909 as a convenient way of expressing a solution's acidity. pH ranges from one – the most acidic – to 14 – the most alkaline.
About Rice University:
Rice University is consistently ranked one of America's best teaching and research universities. It is distinguished by its: size: 2,850 undergraduates and 1,950 graduate students; selectivity: 10 applicants for each place in the freshman class; resources: an undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio of 6-to-1, and the fifth largest endowment per student among American universities; residential college system, which builds communities that are both close-knit and diverse; and collaborative culture, which crosses disciplines, integrates teaching and research, and intermingles undergraduate and graduate work. Rice's wooded campus is located in the nation's fourth largest city and on America's South Coast.
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