Chemistry in PCF

Fatima Alhadi, Vishal Choudhury, Florian Schorn
In collaboration with the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering (FAU)

In this new interdisciplinary effort, we use hollow-core photonic crystal fibres not just to guide light—but to act as micro-reactors. By filling these fibres with reactants, we enable real-time optical probing of chemical reactions with exceptionally small sample volumes (sub-µL).

The combination of tight light confinement and long interaction length allows single-pass spectroscopywith high sensitivity and accuracy. This technique bypasses key limitations of traditional chromatographic and in-situ spectroscopic methods in classical reaction screening. 

We used the technique 

• To monitor acid-catalyzed esterification of methanol and acetic acid [1]
• To monitor the growth of gold nanoparticles inside a hollow-core fibre
• To reveal chiral molecules and observe racemisation [2]