BRAVE - Model OF2i® -OptoFluidic Force Induction for Particle Measurement in Research and Production
Revolutionize your particle measurement with OptoFluidic Force Induction
OF2i® stands for OptoFluidic Force Induction. This patented method for the characterization of nanoparticles is a game changer. For the first time you can get particle data continuously, seamlessly and in real-time, statistically relevant and representative of the whole particle population. OF2i® blasts through the limitations of conventional methods for particle characterization and revolutionizes your research and production.
This new principle uses light as a tool to manipulate nanoscaled objects in liquid pumped through a measuring cell. OptoFluidic Force Induction takes the “optical tweezers” principle pioneered by Arthur Ashkin a number of steps further: it focuses a donut-shaped laser through the liquid sample to exert optical force on the particles that pushes them forward and turns them around the beam’s center.
Imagine your child is learning to walk. When they take their very first steps you will want to capture the moment. Will you take some photos or a video? A series of single snapshots will not tell the story as well as a film sequence. This is how the OF2i® method compares to the established methods for particle measurement. Whereas you only obtain short snapshots of the particle behavior using conventional methods (DLS, Laser Diffraction) or a short video of a limited number of particles (with NTA), OptoFluidic Force Induction delivers continuous measurement data in a seamless video stream.
What does this continuous measurement mean?
This huge amount of data recorded by OF2i® over time gives insight into the concentration, size and size distribution of particle populations – and shows changes to these as they happen, in real-time. The online PAT sensor BRAVE B-Continuous can even be integrated directly into your production plant. Results are delivered continuously with single-particle sensitivity.
Being able to follow sample behavior as (nano)particles react and interact with each other and the sample environment is also groundbreaking for research and development applications. One of our very first research partners, Prof. Tobias Madl at the Medical University of Graz, used the prototype BRAVE B-Curious in his research and was able to directly monitor the processes involved in early biomolecular condensate formation for the very first time. He now has a new BRAVE B-Curious to help further his studies of age-related diseases.
And what about the donut?
The laser used by OF2i® is a vortex laser with a donut-shaped beam. Focusing this donut beam through the liquid sample causes the particles to spin around the beam’s center, moving the particles through the measuring cell on spiral trajectories without them bumping into each other.
(Movies are just better when donuts are involved).
One of the major challenges in particle characterization is the handling of highly polydisperse and multimodal samples, which are frequently encountered in industrial processes. In our short white paper Analyzing polydisperse systems we demonstrate how the OptoFluidic Force Induction (OF2i®) method characterizes complex polydisperse systems in a continuous and seamless measurement spanning approximately one hour.
The corresponding figure shows:
(a) Measured diameters of a mixture of polystyrene spheres (n = 1.59) with nominal diameters of 203, 401, 600, 789, and 1040 nm over a large measurement time. The contribution of each ensemble is determined by a 1D Gaussian mixture model with five components applied to the histogram on top and highlighted by color.
(b) Total concentration (particles/mL) and
(c) count of each cluster, averaged over a period of tmeas = 180 s. For the smallest particles (203 nm), the concentration is divided by a factor of five for better representation.
Particle size histograms (∆d = 10 nm) obtained after (d) 55, (e) 25, and (f) 15 minutes, indicated by markers on the y-axis in panel (a).