“Most people are familiar with silicon as being the material inside your computer, but it has endless uses,” she said. “With our nanoscale porous silicon, we’ve created these nanoscale holes that are a thousand times smaller than your hair. Those selectively capture molecules when pre-treated with the appropriate surface coating, darkening the silicon, which the app detects.”

Similar technology being developed relies on expensive hardware that compliments the smart phone. Weiss’ system uses the phone’s flash as a light source, and the team plans to develop an app that could handle all data processing necessary to confirm that the film simply darkened with the adding of fluid.

What’s more, in the future, such a phone could replace a mass spectrometry system that costs thousands of dollars. The Transportation Security Administration owns hundreds of those at airports across the country, where they’re used to detect gunpowder on hand swabs.

Other home tests rely on a color change, which is a separate chemical reaction that introduces more room for error, Weiss said.

Weiss, Ph.D. student Tengfei Cao, and their team used a biotin-streptavidin protein assay and an iPhone SE, model A1662, to test their silicon films and found the accuracy to be similar to that of benchtop measurement systems. They also used a 3D printed box to stabilize the phone and get standardized measurements for the paper, but Weiss said that wouldn’t be necessary if further research and development led to a commercialized version.

Vanderbilt University. Accessed: June 16, 2019.


Assuntos Conexos:
New biosensor patch detects bacteria on food.

Chemical sensing nanomaterial enables smartphones to detect toxic gases.

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