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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 2: Biomaterials and Biopolymers (joint session BP/CPP)

BP 2.9: Talk

Monday, March 12, 2018, 12:00–12:15, H 1058

Magnetic collecting of malaria pigment crystals by magnetized thin films — •Szilvia Mucza¹, Tamas Prok¹, Agnes Orban¹, Adrienne Furedi², Peter Furjes², and Istvan Kezsmarki¹ — ¹Dept. of Physics, Budapest Uni. of Technology and Economics and MTA-BME Lendület Magneto-optical Spectroscopy Research Group, 1111 Budapest, HU — ²Inst. of Technical Physics and Materials Science, Centre for Energy Research, HAS, 1121 Budapest, HU

Malaria pigment (hemozoin) crystals are the by-product of the hemoglobin metabolism and are unique indicators of the malaria infection. These micrometer-sized, needle-like, paramagnetic crystals have low crystal symmetry, thus show optical and magnetic anisotropy. Our group has been developing a malaria diagnostic device based on their linear dichroism and we aim to integrate a magnetic prefilter to increase the method’s efficiency.

For this reason we started to investigate the behaviour of hemozoin crystals in their liquid suspension under magnetic field. To enhance the magnetic field gradient we designed micron-sized magnetizable periodic structures by lithography, and we observed the behaviour of synthetically prepared hemozoin crystals in liquid over these structures. We explained our observations theoretically, with the modeling of the magnetic properties near the surface of the periodic structure. We performed measurements under flow using an aligned microfluidic system to optimize different geometric parameters of magnetic structures.