Cytometric biochips with optically active surfaces for spatial engineering of fluorescence excitation

The development of surface-active biochips for control of fluorescence within microscopy platforms is described. These use surface-plasmon control to provide selective excitation of fluorescently labeled, live cell populations. These chips effectively combine a number of commonly used techniques such as SPR, TIRF and epi-fluorescence within a single device and have the potential to provide sub-cellular discrimination of excitation in 3-D. Thus within a single field of view we can selectively excite membrane versus cytoplasm and localise the excitation within the lateral plane to an area of a few square microns.