SBIR Phase I: A Smartphone-Based Handheld Sensor for Accurate and Quantitative Detection of Toxic Ion Contaminants in Environmental Water

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is a portable, low-cost plug and play mobile internet integrated sensor product catering to the needs of water quality monitoring market, a global market with a compounded annual growth rate of 4-6%. The water testing equipment market is divided into low-end, low-cost on-field test equipment (such as nitrate strip) that gives qualitative information about the analytes, and high-end testing devices used in labs (such as mass spectrometer) providing accurate quantitative information. If successful, this sensor technology will bridge the gap by providing low-cost, sensitive, accurate tools for quantitative measurement of analytes such as toxic ions. Consequently, successful demonstrations of the proposed sensor technology will facilitate wider market acceptance and penetration of personalized mobile-enabled water quality monitoring devices. Another aspect of the project is to enable ?citizen scientist? to partake in environmental data collection and spread sustainability education. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project proposes to develop a smartphone-based electrical sensor technology for real-time water quality monitoring. Currently, spectrometry, capillary electrophoresis, chemical reduction methods, and gas chromatography coupled mass spectroscopy are some of the most widely used techniques for water quality analysis; however, these instruments are bulky and costly; the methods are time consuming, and involve laborious sample processing steps requiring well-trained personnel in a laboratory setting; In order to meet the market need for a portable, low-cost, and easy-to-use water analysis technology, the project will investigate a smartphone integrated electrical readout sensor platform which will be able to address all of the above issues by: 1) the development of a low-cost, portable sensor package consisting of an electrochemical sensor chip, a driver circuit, and rechargeable battery power for standalone operation; 2) the application of polymer immobilized ion sensing coatings to increase the selectivity during ion detection in a non-laboratory setting; 3) the use of algorithm against calibration curve to automatically detect and quantify toxic ion, and 4) the use of smartphone in-built GPS and mobile broadband function to combine the sensing results with geospatial information and uploaded to the Cloud for further analysis.