Terahertz Microfluidics for attomole- and picoliter-level sensing

We present a compact terahertz (THz) microfluidic chip based on a nonlinear optical crystal with a small number of meta-atoms for accelerating the research on THz microfluidics. The chip operates based on near-field interactions among a solution sample that flows in a microchannel, meta-atoms, and a highly dense point THz source that occurs in the process of optical rectification at the irradiation spots of femtosecond pulse laser beam. To date, we have achieved attomole-level sensing using a picoliter-order volume of various solutions in a sub-wavelength effective sensing area. Details of the chip, sensing examples, and future THz microfluidics are discussed.