Bactericidal,quorum quenching and anti-biofilm nanofactories: a new niche for nanotechnologists

Despite several conventional potent antibacterial therapies, bacterial infections pose a significant threat to human health because they are emerging as the leading cause of death worldwide. Due to the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, there is a pressing demand to discover novel approaches for developing more effective therapies to treat multidrug-resistant bacterial strains and biofilm-associated infections. Therefore, attention has been especially devoted to a new and emerging branch of science “nanotechnology” to design non-conventional antimicrobial chemotherapies. A range of nanomaterials and nano-sized carriers for conventional antimicrobial agents have fully justified their potential to combat bacterial diseases by reducing cell viability, by attenuating quorum sensing, and by inhibiting/or eradicating biofilms. This communication summarizes emerging nano-antimicrobial therapies in treating bacterial infections, particularly using antibacterial, quorum quenching, and anti-biofilm nanomaterials as new approaches to tackle the current challenges in combating infectious diseases.     

Multilayer Hybrid Plasmonic Nano Patch Antenna

This is the first report of a hybrid plasmonic nano patch antenna having metal insulator metal (HMIM) multilayer configuration. It is designed in a footprint area of 1.7 × 1.175 μm² to resonate at 1.55 μm wavelength. The proposed antenna is inset fed by an HMIM plasmonic waveguide for achieving proper impedance matching. It is observed, through electromagnetic numerical simulation, that the proposed plasmonic nano patch antenna emits a directional beam with a bandwidth, gain, and efficiency of 0.194 μm, 8.3 dB, and 96% respectively, which are significantly higher than previously reported designs. Since inset-fed antennas are suitable for developing high-gain antenna array, hence further, we examined antenna performance by designing antenna array. The proposed antenna is practically realizable and can be fabricated using standard semiconductor fabrication process. Moreover, it could be used for numerous chip scale applications such as wireless interconnects energy harvesting, photoemission, photo detection, scattering, heat transfer, spectroscopy, and optical sensing.