Patterning Networks of Grade IV Glioblastoma on Silicon Chip.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most aggressive high-grade brain cancer with a median survival time of <15 months. Due to GBMs fast and infiltrative growth patient prognosis is poor with recurrence after treatment common. Investigating GBMs ability to communicate, specifically via Ca2+ signaling, within its functional tumour networks may unlock new therapeutics to reduce the rapid infiltration and growth which currently makes treatment ineffective. This work aims to produce patterned networks of GBM cells such that the Ca2+ communication at a network level can be repeatedly and reliably investigated.

Electron-beam lithography of plasmonic nanorod arrays for multilayered optical storage.

In this paper we demonstrate multilayer fabrication of plasmonic gold nanorod arrays using electron-beam lithography (EBL), and show that this structure could be used for multilayered optical storage media capable of continuous-wave (cw) laser readout. The gold nanorods fabricated using the EBL method are aligned perfectly and homogeneous in size and shape, allowing the polarization response of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to be observed through ensemble array. This property in turn permits polarization detuned SPR readout possible and other manipulations such as progressively twisted arrays through the multilayers to make cw readout possible through deeper layers without too much extinction loss. The layered gold nanorod arrays are separated by thick spacer layer to enable the optical resolving of individual layers. Using this method, we demonstrated four-fold reduction in extinction loss for cw readout in three-layer structure. The current technique of multilayer fabrication and readout can be useful in 3-dimensional fabrication of plasmonic circuits and structures.