Kadir Aslan on Nanotechnology and Medical Biotechnology

Human hair, which is visible to the naked eye, has a typical size of 100,000th of a meter or said to be in the micro scale. Nanotechnology is defined as the manipulation of matter in the scale of 1 to 100 nm, or the nanoscale (that is, up to 1000-fold less than a human hair). Human eye cannot see the nanoscale matter directly and require special electronic and optical instrumentation to visualize them.

Although nanotechnology has direct implications in physics, chemistry, materials science and electronics, in the last 20 years scientists worldwide has started to use nanotechnology in medical biotechnology. This surge in the nanoscale biomedical research can be attributed to the similarity of size of the nanoscale matter with the biological materials found in the human body.  By combining the biological materials with nanoscale matter, one can create hybrid systems, which display biological and electronic functions at the same time. In addition, nanoscale matter can manipulate biological processes and electromagnetic energy to significantly improve the instrumentation used in the detection of human diseases.

The research in the Aslan Research Group focuses on the engineering of nanoscale matter for applications in biomedical research in combination with microwave energy, where we develop nanotechnology-based clinical tests that can detect human diseases in a quick and a low-cost manner. For more information visit my faculty webpage at www.morgan.edu/kadiraslan.

References

1. Aslan, K. “Rapid Whole Blood Bioassays using Microwave-Accelerated Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence”, Nano Biomedicine and Engineering (2010), 2 (1), 1-9.
2. Aslan, K.; Grell, T.A.J. " Rapid and Sensitive Detection of Troponin I from Human Whole Blood Samples using Silver Nanoparticle Films and Microwave Heating", Clinical Chemistry", (2011), 57(5), 746-752.
3. Caglayan, H.; Cakmakyapan, S.; Addae, S.; Pinard, M.; Caliskan, D.; Aslan, K.; Ozbay, E. “Ultrafast and Sensitive Bioassay using Split Ring Resonator Structures and Microwave Heating” Applied Physics Letters, (2010), 97 (9), 093701.
4. Mojibola, M.; Dongmo-Momo, G.; Mohammed, M.; Aslan, K. "Crystal Engineering of L-Alanine with L-Leucine Additive using Metal-Assisted and Microwave-Accelerated Evaporative Crystallization", Crystal Growth and Design (2014), 14 (5), 2494-2501.