Research Overview

The Schluecker group is working in the field of Bio- and Nano-Photonics. The rational design and chemical synthesis of tailor-made functionalized metal colloids for bioanalytical and biomedical applications (assays, immunohistochemistry) in combination with optical detection is one focus of our research.

In cooperation with pathologists, we aim at establishing a methodology for highly differentiated, individualized and predictive tumor diagnostics based on a quantitative multi-parameter detection of tumor-relevant biomarkers, in particular for biomarkers in tissues employing in-situ optical imaging approaches. Various methods of optical microscopy and spectroscopy in combination with electron microscopy are employed for the characterization of the physical and chemical properties of our novel nanoparticle-based agents.

The interplay between theory/simulation and experiments is important to us: Starting from the physical description and computation of the optical properties of single gold and silver nanoparticles as well as clusters thereof, we follow a theory-guided approach to rationally design and synthesize functionalized colloids with tailor-made physical and chemical properties. Experiments at the single-particle level are performed in order to unambiguously characterize the physical and chemical properties as well as to establish correlations between structure/morphology and the corresponding properties/optical spectra.

A second line of research is the use of laser spectroscopic techniques for monitoring molecular recognition processes. Data from molecular vibrational spectroscopies are analyzed by multivariate/chemometric techniques and compared with results from computational chemistry. In fundamental methodological work, we have demonstrated that vibrational Raman and mid infrared spectroscopy are ideally suited for quantitative and label-free monitoring of the molecular recognition between small peptides and rationally designed artificial receptors (Schmuck group, organic chemistry, UDE).

Future work aims at quantitative, label-free and in particular site-specific probing of molecular recognition processes between small rationally designed supramolecular ligands and proteins.

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