Skip to main content

Draw-your-own electrodes set to speed up development of micro detection devices

Draw-your-own electrodes set to speed up development of micro detection devices :

This is an Iron-Man-shaped electrode printed using the technique.

Miniature devices for sensing biological molecules could be developed quicker thanks to a rapid prototyping method. Devices that sense and measure biological molecules important for healthcare, such as detecting diseases in blood samples, rely on electrodes to carry out their tasks.
New generations of these devices are being made that manipulate molecules or work with smaller concentrations of molecules, for example detecting rare cancer cells in blood samples.
These require intricate patterning of minute electrodes. Getting the right pattern is key, but building prototypes of different electrode designs can be expensive and time-consuming, often requiring specialist equipment and expertise.
Now, researchers at Imperial College London, have created a method that allows intricate electrode patterns to be printed in community labs and hackspaces at a fraction of the time and cost. The details of their method are published in Scientific Reports.
Lead researcher Dr Ali Salehi-Reyhani, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, said: "With our method researchers and startups can more easily design and develop analytical devices, even when they need electronics that can't be bought off-the-shelf.
"Community hackspaces are great for democratising science, allowing more people to try out new technology solutions. We hope this method will allow bioelectronics to benefit from that ecosystem of hackers getting hands-on with problems and solutions in healthcare."
The method allows researchers to design electrode patterns on computers before printing them off using a laser-cutting printer. The cavities are then filled with metal using microfluidic techniques -- using the science of how fluids move through confined spaces.
In this way, researchers could print several sheets of electrodes, each with a slightly different design, allowing them to be tested in rapid succession to find the best design. Previously, designs may have had to be sent away to be manufactured, taking weeks or even months to arrive at the best design, but now the whole process can be reduced to a matter of days.
The team at fabriCELL, a centre of excellence in artificial cell science run by Imperial College London and King's College London, are now using the technique to prototype devices for manipulating and analysing cells.
They say the technique could be used to speed up the development of flexible wearable devices, such as skin patches that monitor health signals and devices, and devices that could be used in hospitals or GP surgeries, such as ones that can quickly distinguish between viral and bacterial infections with just a drop of blood.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Size matters: New data reveals cell size sparks genome awakening in embryos

Transitions are a hallmark of life. When dormant plants flower in the spring or when a young adult strikes out on their own, there is a shift in control. Similarly, there is a transition during early development when an embryo undergoes biochemical changes, switching from being controlled by maternal molecules to being governed by its own genome. For the first time, a team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found in an embryo that activation of its genome does not happen all at once, instead it follows a specific pattern controlled primarily by the various sizes of its cells. The researchers published their results this week as the cover story in  Developmental Cell . In an early embryo undergoing cell division, maternally loaded RNA and proteins regulate the cell cycle. The genomes of the zygote -- a term for the fertilized egg -- are initially in sleep mode. However, at a point in the early life of the embryo, these zygotic nuclei "wake...
Post a Comment
Read more

Home births as safe as hospital births: International study suggests

A large international study led by McMaster University shows that low risk pregnant women who intend to give birth at home have no increased chance of the baby's perinatal or neonatal death compared to other low risk women who intend to give birth in a hospital. The results have been published by  The Lancet 's  EClinicalMedicine  journal. "More women in well-resourced countries are choosing birth at home, but concerns have persisted about their safety," said Eileen Hutton, professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology at McMaster, founding director of the McMaster Midwifery Research Centre and first author of the paper. "This research clearly demonstrates the risk is no different when the birth is intended to be at home or in hospital." The study examined the safety of place of birth by reporting on the risk of death at the time of birth or within the first four weeks, and found no clinically important or statistically different risk between home...
Post a Comment
Read more

Molecular adlayer produced by dissolving water-insoluble nanographene in water

Molecular adlayer produced by dissolving water-insoluble nanographene in water : "Nanographene incorporated micelle capsules" can be prepared by simply pulverizing and mixing nanographene with amphiphilic V-shaped anthracene molecules in water at room temperature. Even though nanographene is insoluble in water and organic solvents, Kumamoto University (KU) and Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) researchers have found a way to dissolve it in water. Using "molecular containers" that encapsulate water-insoluble molecules, the researchers developed a formation procedure for a nanographene adlayer, a layer that chemically interacts with the underlying substance, by just mixing the molecular containers and nanographene together in water. The method is expected to be useful for the fabrication and analysis of next-generation functional nanomaterials. Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in sheet form. It is lighter than metal wit...
Post a Comment
Read more