I-Corps: Commercialization Feasibility of a Novel Electronic Tongue

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Growing concerns about the quality and safety of water and beverages, present an immediate need for sensing devices that are portable, easy to use, and inexpensive. Use of existing laboratory instruments such as atomic absorption spectrometry, inductively coupled plasma-mass spectroscopy, and x-ray fluorescence for heavy metal testing is expensive, laborious and time-consuming. The I-Corps team has developed a portable electrochemical chemical sensing system (E-Tongue) that mimics the human gustatory system using disposable electrochemical sensors combined with pattern recognition techniques for detecting heavy metals. The rapid, user-friendly, low cost, and portable E-Tongue will lend itself readily for on-site testing of water and beverages. The economic impact of this technology is expected to be quite significant since this technological platform will address the large market for water and beverage analysis instrumentation.The I-Corps team has developed an E-Tongue prototype for toxic heavy metal detection. It consists of a compact potentiostat device with disposable screen printed electrodes. The E-Tongue prototype will be trained to identify target elements as well as predict their concentrations in water and different beverage matrices containing buffer solutions. The E-Tongue demonstrations will initially focus on detecting lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic. The detection capabilities will be expanded in the future to include other heavy metals including chromium, nickel, copper, and zinc. The E-Tongue performance will be tested and evaluated by comparing it with results obtained using standard analytical methods. Several performance parameters such as selectivity, limit of detection, repeatability, precision and accuracy will be determined