"NANOTECH: Smart dust made to 'escort' molecules to sensors"
Researchers have shown recently that magnetic silicon nanoparticles-smart dust-can act as chaperones, surrounding and herding rare sample molecules so that the samples navigate channels to microfluidic sensors without leaving any residue. Someday such chaperones might surround cancer cells and "escort" them to the exit. "When you start talking about samples on the molecular scale, your surface-to-volume ratio is so high that you can't let any [part of the sample] stick to microfluidic channels," said professor Michael Sailor at the University of California at San Diego.
Text: http://www.eet.com/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=53700081