Foodborne disease is a major public health threat worldwide. Salmonellosis, an infectious disease caused by Salmonella spp., is one of the most common foodborne diseases. Isolation and identification of Salmonella by conventional bacterial culture or molecular-based methods are time consuming and usually take a few hours to days to complete. In response to the demand for rapid on line or at site detection of pathogens, in this study, we describe for the first time an eight-chamber lab-on-a-chip (LOC) system with integrated magnetic beads-based sample preparation and loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) for rapid and quantitative detection of Salmonella spp. in food samples. The whole diagnostic procedures including DNA isolation, isothermal amplification, and real-time detection were accomplished in a single chamber. Up to eight samples could be handled simultaneously and the system was capable to detect Salmonella at concentration of 50 cells per test within 40 min. The simple design, together with high level of integration, isothermal amplification, and quantitative analysis of multiple samples in short time will greatly enhance the practical applicability of the LOC system for rapid on-site screening of Salmonella for applications in food safety control, environmental surveillance, and clinical diagnostics.

Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) and dynamic magnetization reversal process in shows the detailed behavior of nucleation and displacement of the domain walls.

A trilayer structure, which has weak exchange coupling and high active current, has been optimized emphasizing for high field-sensitivity planar Hall effect (PHE) sensor. To illustrate the high field sensitivity of the PHE sensor, three different structures are fabricated: a bilayer thin film Ta(3)/NiFe(10)/IrMn(10)/Ta(3) (nm), a spin-valve thin film Ta(3)/NiFe(10)/Cu(1.2)/NiFe(2)/IrMn(10)/Ta(3) (nm), and a trilayer thin film Ta(3)/NiFe(10)/Cu(0.12)/IrMn(10)/Ta(3) (nm). The characterized results reveal that the field sensitivity of PHE sensor based on trilayer thin film is about one order larger than that of bilayer and is about twice larger than that of spin-valve thin film. Moreover, in trilayer structure, the thinner spacer layer gives the better performance. When the nominal thickness of spacer Cu layer is the smallest, the PHE sensor exhibits the best performance, i.e., in this experiment, it is about 0.12 nm.

We developed a lab-on-a-chip system integrating miniaturized micro-optic SAF arrays within microfluidic chambers for high sensitivity and multiplexed detection of fluorescent molecules.

The exchange bias (EB) effect has been observed in magnetic Bi0.9Gd0.1Fe0.9Ti0.1O3 nanoparticles. The influence of magnetic field cooling on the exchange bias effect has also been investigated. The magnitude of the exchange bias field (HEB) increases with the cooling magnetic field, showing that the strength of the exchange bias effect is tunable by the field cooling. The HEB values are also found to be dependent on the temperature. This magnetically tunable exchange bias obtained at temperatures up to 250 K in Bi0.9Gd0.1Fe0.9Ti0.1O3 nanoparticles may be worthwhile for potential applications.

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Solid-phase PCR (SP-PCR) has attracted considerable interest in different research fields since it allows parallel DNA amplification on the surface of a solid substrate. However, the applications of SP-PCR have been hampered by the low efficiency of the solid-phase amplification. In order to increase the yield of the solid-phase amplification, we studied various parameters including the length, the density, as well as the annealing position of the solid support primer. A dramatic increase in the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio was observed when increasing the length of solid support primers from 45 to 80 bp. The density of the primer on the surface was found to be important for the S/N ratio of the SP-PCR, and the optimal S/N was obtained with a density of 1.49 × 10 molecules/mm. In addition, the use of solid support primers with a short overhang at the 5' end would help improve the S/N ratio of the SP-PCR. With optimized conditions, SP-PCR can achieve amplification efficiency comparable to conventional PCR, with a limit of detection of 1.5 copies/μl (37.5 copies/reaction). These improvements will pave the way for wider applications of SP-PCR in various fields such as clinical diagnosis, high-throughput DNA sequencing, and single-nucleotide polymorphism analysis. Graphical abstract Schematic representation of solid-phase PCR.

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