Collaborative Research: GCR: Convergence on Phosphorus Sensing for Understanding Global Biogeochemistry and Enabling Pollution Management and Mitigation

磷是构成地球上所有生命的基础的基本元素。磷在生物地球化学循环中发挥着核心作用，这些循环广泛影响全球生物生产力、粮食资源、能源生产和气候。了解关键食品、能源和水资源之间的复杂相互关系，并解决磷需求、污染和回收问题，是可持续未来的一些最大科学挑战。这些问题的根源是无法在人们愿意的时间和地点直接测量磷，并且无法以具有成本效益的方式这样做。这一技术差距排除了在区域、国家和全球范围内结束“磷循环”的能力。这一不断发展的融合研究项目将克服基础科学、工程和原型制造方面的挑战，实现便携式、低成本、坚固耐用和选择性强的磷传感器，以满足这些关键和未得到满足的需求。该项目汇集了拥有超分子和无机化学、聚合物科学、软物质电子学、电气工程以及环境和海洋科学专业知识的研究人员。融合的科学、技术和工程进步将融合在一起，实现化学、超分子、转导和设备层面的控制新范式，最终将作为引入全新一代磷传感器的基础。这些传感器将满足提供实用解决方案所需的功能和经济要求，以捕捉磷在农业景观、水道和生态系统中的空间和时间存在方式的复杂性。与利益相关者、工业合作伙伴和政府机构的接触将指导人们努力实现更多的应用、商业化和其他社会相关的传感挑战。这一融合的研究计划将把基础科学和工程方法整合在一起，并将传统上不同学科之间的重大智力和技术重叠结合在一起，以应对限制磷传感技术发展的长期挑战。该计划的具体目标是：(1)设计、开发和了解分子识别元件(“受体”)如何以无机和有机磷酸盐化合物的形式选择性地与磷结合，(2)定制受体-分析物-半导体相互作用，并研究它们如何将磷结合事件具体地转化为敏感信号；(3)将这些化学作用集成到低成本电子设备中；(4)设计能够在复杂环境中敏感地量化磷循环的工程传感器，包括农业径流、废水以及淡水、咸水、河口和海洋环境；(5)将化学磷酸盐检测传递到电子平台，以数字化和传递这些数据；以及(6)开发用于现场使用和演示的原型。这种全面的方法将产生可现场部署的磷技术，这些技术成本低，实时运行，并直接与农业、环境和海洋监测中广泛使用的商业平台对接。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Phosphorus (P) is an essential element that forms the basis for all life on earth. Phosphorus plays a central role in biogeochemical cycles that broadly impact global biological productivity, food resources, energy generation, and climate. Understanding the complex interrelationships between critical food, energy, and water resources and addressing phosphorus demand, pollution, and recovery are some of the greatest scientific challenges for a sustainable future. At the root of these problems is the inability to measure phosphorus directly when and where one would like and to do so in a cost-effective manner. This technology gap precludes the ability to close the “phosphorus cycle” at regional, national, and global scales. This Growing Convergence Research project will overcome fundamental science, engineering, and prototyping challenges to enable portable, low-cost, robust, and selective sensors for phosphorus that address these critical and unmet needs. This project brings together researchers with expertise spanning supramolecular and inorganic chemistry, polymer science, soft-matter electronics, electrical engineering, and environmental and marine science. Convergent scientific, technological, and engineering advances will coalesce to realize new paradigms for control at the chemical, supramolecular, transduction, and device levels that will ultimately serve as the basis for ushering in a completely new generation of sensors for phosphorus. These sensors will satisfy the functional and economic requirements needed to provide pragmatic solutions for capturing the complexity of how phosphorus exists in space and time within agricultural landscapes, waterways, and ecosystems. Engagements with stakeholders, industrial partners, and government agencies will guide efforts towards additional applications, commercialization, and other societally relevant sensing challenges.This convergent research program will integrate basic science and engineering approaches together and combine significant intellectual and technical overlap between traditionally disparate disciplines to address long-standing challenges that have limited the development of phosphorus sensing technologies. Specific objectives of the program are to: (1) design, develop and understand how molecular recognition elements (“receptors”) selectively bind phosphorus in the form of inorganic and organic phosphate compounds, (2) tailor receptor-analyte-semiconductor interactions and investigate how they specifically transduce the phosphate-binding events into a sensitive signal; (3) integrate these chemistries within low-cost electronic devices; (4) engineer sensors that enable sensitive quantification in complex environments for managing the phosphorus cycle including agricultural runoff, wastewater, and fresh, brackish, estuarine, and marine environments; (5) communicate chemical phosphate detection to electronic platforms to digitize and relay this data; and (6) develop prototypes for field use and demonstrations. This holistic approach will produce field-deployable technologies for phosphorus that are low-cost, operate in real-time, and directly interface with commercial platforms broadly utilized within agricultural, environmental, and marine monitoring.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.