Issue 5 Chemical Technology 2005

Cover image for Highlights in Chemical Technology

Chemical technology news from across RSC Publishing.

Issue 5

Illuminating spore detection

Portable detectors for bacterial spores may be one step closer thanks to Andreas Manz at ISAS, Dortmund, Germany and colleagues in the UK. They have come up with an ultrafast approach to detect spores from microbes such as anthrax bacteria, using a laser to disrupt spores on a microchip. This releases the DNA into the microchannel, allowing on-chip amplification by PCR and detection by mass spectrometry. With further advances in laser technology, the method could be used in portable high-sensitivity spore detectors.

The eyes have it

Improved global monitoring of prohibited growth promoters in livestock is now possible according to scientists in Northern Ireland. Kevin Cooper and D Glenn Kennedy have developed a technique using only single mass spectrometry or UV detection to detect nitrofuran metabolite residues at the parts per million levels found in porcine retina. Cooper and Kennedy say that this will help laboratories, particularly in South East Asia, who do not have access to instrumentation equipped to monitor nitrofurans down to the low parts per billion levels commonly found in edible tissues.

Small and simple

A new way of making microwell arrays has been devised by Peng Jiang at Corning Inc. in the US. Circular silicon wafers (4 cm across) are coated with a polymer containing tiny silicon spheres (one third of a micron in diameter). The top layer of the polymer is then burnt off using an oxygen plasma exposing the spheres protruding from the surface. The spheres are then dissolved away with acid resulting in a pitted surface ideal for use in micro-scale chemical analysis. This simple method readily lends itself to mass production of wells with volumes as low as 10^-17 litre.

Thin films with nanoparticles

An effective route to films of transition metal oxides highly dispersed on silica has been achieved by a multinational team of researchers in Italy, Austria and Germany, led by Silvia Gross from ISTM in Padova, Italy. The homogeneous, smooth and transparent films were prepared using polymer processing methods that offer greater control at the nanoscale than previously. Gross hopes to apply this technique to systems with up to three different metal oxides to create thin films with potential applications in microelectronic devices.

Essential Elements

We have lift off!

The countdown is over and the first print issue of Molecular BioSystems, a chemical biology journal with a particular focus at the interface between chemistry and the -omic science...

As clear as crystal

'Dealing with nearly 1300 manuscripts and 3000 cif files a year means my day is never dull!' says Kirsty Anderson, crystallographic data editor at the Royal Society of Chemistry.

And finally......

Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (PCCP) has been selected by the National Library of Medicine to be indexed and included in Index Medicus/MEDLINE