Hashimoto Michinao, Feng Ji, York Roger L, Ellerbee Audrey K, Morrison Greg, Thomas Samuel W, Mahadevan L, Whitesides George M
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, 12 Oxford Street, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
J Am Chem Soc. 2009 Sep 2;131(34):12420-9. doi: 10.1021/ja904788m.
This article describes a new procedure for generating and transmitting a message--a sequence of optical pulses--by aligning a mask (an opaque sheet containing transparent "windows") below a microfluidic channel in which flows an opaque continuous fluid containing transparent droplets. The optical mask encodes the message as a unique sequence of windows that can transmit or block light; the flow of transparent droplets in the channel converts this message into a sequence of optical pulses. The properties of the windows on the mask (e.g., their size, wavelength of transmittance, orientation of polarization) determine the information carried in these optical pulses (e.g., intensity, color, polarization). The structure of a transmitted signal depends on the number and spacing of droplets in the channel. Fourier transformation can deconvolve superimposed signals created by the flow of multiple droplets into the message that a single droplet would transmit. The research described in this contribution explores a new field at the intersection of chemistry, materials science, and information technology: infochemistry.
本文描述了一种生成和传输消息的新方法——通过将一个掩膜（一张带有透明“窗口”的不透明薄片）对准微流控通道下方，在该通道中流动着含有透明液滴的不透明连续流体，从而生成并传输由一系列光脉冲组成的消息。光学掩膜将消息编码为能透射或阻挡光线的独特窗口序列；通道中透明液滴的流动将此消息转换为一系列光脉冲。掩膜上窗口的特性（例如其尺寸、透射波长、偏振方向）决定了这些光脉冲所携带的信息（例如强度、颜色、偏振）。传输信号的结构取决于通道中液滴的数量和间距。傅里叶变换可以将由多个液滴流动产生的叠加信号解卷积为单个液滴所传输的消息。本论文中描述的研究探索了化学、材料科学和信息技术交叉的一个新领域：信息化学。
