Take-off grant for characterization of nanoparticles in solution

An NWO Take-off grant has been awarded for commercialization of the nanoCET platform, a device that can measure the size, concentration and charge of nanoparticles while in solution. Inventor of the platform and physicist at Utrecht University Sanli Faez had verified its application already in a previous research collaboration with Harvard University. “With this device, we hope to accommodate a very large group of researchers in different fields.”

Aqueous sample

Sanli Faez explains how nanoCET works: “The novelty about nanoCET is the fact that samples are investigated in a solution, which keeps particles in their natural three-dimensional shape. The device can thus optically track nanoparticles like single viral proteins. It consists of an optical fiber with a channel smaller than a wavelength of light. Inside this channel, light runs through an aqueous sample that contains nanoparticles. The light is scattered, and nanoparticles are detected by the microscope.”

Feasibility study

With the NWO Take-off grant of 40,000 euros, the Light in Complex Systems group of the Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science will be able to do a feasibility study in the first half of 2019, investigating the expected success of spin-off company. The invention itself was done in 2015, when Sanli Faez worked at Leiden University. Watch the video made by Harvard University at that time.