Osaka’s 10nm gold-coated optical fiber gathers 100,000 bacteria in 60 seconds via laser

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers built a 10-nm gold-coated optical fiber tip that uses laser-induced heating and convection to gather bacteria and microparticles into one point.

The system can concentrate bacteria from a 20-microliter sample in under a minute, with more than tenfold better efficiency than previous 2D methods.

The approach was demonstrated with E. coli O157 and could improve the speed and sensitivity of pathogen detection.

It may enable faster clinical diagnostics and environmental monitoring from very small liquid samples.