Press notes

SERS, an extremely sensitive laboratory method of analysing chemical composition, is set to become widespread decades after its invention. The main obstacle that has been slowing down the development of this promising research technique, the poor quality of the substrate on which samples are applied, is now disappearing. New substrates, guaranteeing repeatability of measurements and the appropriate signal enhancement, are now available thanks to scientists from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

Smartphone-sized devices capable of purifying water for one person using sunlight; desktop modules producing substances valuable for the pharmaceutical industry from chemical waste. The construction of such innovative instruments, providing the product not in batches but continuously, is becoming possible thanks to an ultrasonic technique of depositing titanium dioxide layers onto the inner walls of tubes with diameters of even micrometre dimensions.

In this year alone, worldwide, about 700 thousand people will die as a result of the inefficacy of antibiotics. Many of them would survive if doctors were to rapidly obtain accurate information on the susceptibility of the bacteria attacking the patient to all the clinically important antibiotics. Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in collaboration with a start-up BacterOMIC Ltd. aims to deliver the first laboratory instrument to provide all the information that the doctor will need to apply targeted therapies against multi-resistant pathogens.

In medical diagnostics, the importance of genetic code assays is growing day by day and modern molecular biology could not do without it. Current DNA analysis techniques, however, are far from perfect. Working on a record high speed genetic research tool Curiosity Diagnostics, a spin-off company of the Warsaw Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and part of the Scope Fluidics group, has developed a new method of DNA analysis, combining the key advantages of the two currently most used methods.

Light initiates many chemical reactions. Experiments at the Laser Centre of the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the University of Warsaw's Faculty of Physics have for the first time demonstrated that increasing the intensity of illumination some reactions can be significantly faster. Here, acceleration was achieved using pairs of ultrashort laser pulses.