Nanotechnology Spotlight – Latest Articles

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Showing Spotlights 41 - 48 of 231 in category All (newest first):

 

Enhancing plasmonic biosensors with atomically thin nanomaterials

biomarker-detectionResearchers have significantly enhanced the performance of a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensing platform by adding an atomically thin phase change material to the sensor. This plasmonic sensing device exhibits a detection limit of 1 femtomol for tumor necrosis factor (TNF alpha) biomarkers , which is more than three orders of magnitude compared to current state-of-art nanomaterial-enhanced plasmonic sensors. It also detects small biotin molecules with a sensitivity of 10 femtomols. This sub-attomole detection level is a significant improvement compared to other SPR designs.

Apr 19th, 2021

A wearable, wireless feedback sensor system to track body conditions

sensor-systemWearable flexible sensors have recently emerged as promising alternatives for human healthcare monitoring due to their lightweight and thin-film-based nature. However, few of these flexible sensor systems are applicable to neonatal monitoring, especially sleeping posture detection. Researchers now report a versatile laser-induced-graphene-based integrated sensor system, which can wirelessly monitor sleeping postures, respiration rate, and diaper wetness with feedback alarm functions.

Mar 31st, 2021

Ultrasensitive and label-free chirality detection of diabetes-related metabolic molecules

plasmonic-sensingResearchers demonstrate label-free chiral detection of metabolic molecules at picomolar level through microbubble-induced rapid accumulation of biomolecules on plasmonic chiral sensors, which shows a 10-million times enhancement in sensitivity comparing to state-of-the-art plasmonic chiral sensors. The researchers achieved their ultrahigh sensitivity in chiral sensing of biomolecules by utilizing two enhancement mechanisms: the microbubble-induced accumulation of biomolecules onto the chiral plasmonic substrates; and the subsequent plasmon-enhanced chiral sensing.

Mar 30th, 2021

Real-time sweat analysis with wearable microfluidic sensors

microfluidicsResearchers have demonstrated the large-scale fabrication of skin-interfaced printed microfluidic patches, capable of multiplexed electrochemical detection of biomarkers from human sweat. This sensor continuously and simultaneously measures the level of biomarkers such as lactate, Na+, K+, and pH during sweating. The skin-worn sensor can selectively measure analytes even in the presence of other interfering species present in sweat. The patch is integrated with a custom-made miniature printed circuit board that enables multiplexed decoding of sweat and wireless signal transduction to the host devices and is completely free from any sensor-to-sensor transfer of signals.

Mar 29th, 2021

Toward perdurable flexible electronics

flexible-electronicsIn order to realize practical device applications of stretchable strain sensors, stability without sacrificing sensitivity, stretchability, and scalability is crucial. To that end, researchers report a kirigami-structured graphene-polymer hybrid nanocomposite for strain sensors by a laser direct writing technique on a polyimide sheet. The approach of laser direct writing not only contributes to the conversion of polyimide material into conductively porous carbonized film, but also gives rise to the formation of kirigami-shaped structures with highly stretchable capability in a fast and efficient manner.

Mar 23rd, 2021

Flexible hybrid sensor systems with feedback functions

flexible-electronicsAn overview of feedback-driven, skin-like multifunctional sensor systems, from the basic material/structural design to applications. Emerging functional nanomaterials and innovative structures for constructing flexible sensors are highlighted, followed by an introduction of various integrated flexible sensor systems. Several categories of feedback sensor systems are described in terms of prosthesis- and AR/VR-based human-machine interfaces, smartphone-based approaches for point-of-care detection, and smart wearable displays for direct signal visualization. The profound significance of these innovations is also highlighted.

Dec 28th, 2020

Nanotechnology for explosives trace detection

explosionExplosive trace detection (ETD) is a challenging task. Various factors, such as wide variety of compounds that can be used as explosives, the vast number of deployment means, and the lack of inexpensive sensors providing both high sensitivity and selectivity, have made trace detection a complex and costly task. Whereas animals still remain a benchmark for emerging technologies with key attributes being high selectivity, sensitivity, concurrent detection of multiple analytes, and fast screening times, it is likely that nanomaterials will play an important role in the development of much improved future ETD technologies.

Aug 26th, 2020

Probing plant health status using flexible sensor systems

plant-sensorResearchers report an integrated multimodal flexible sensor system comprising a room humidity sensor, a leaf humidity sensor, an optical sensor, and a temperature sensor that can tap into potential physiological health issues of plants. Using stacked ZIS nanosheets as the kernel sensing media, the flexible sensor can not only perceive light illumination at a fast response, but also monitor the humidity with a perdurable steady performance. The researchers measured in real time three primary abiotic stresses - i.e. humidity, light and temperature - that govern the transpiration of plants are measured without signal cross-coupling effect.

Aug 12th, 2020