Thin Film Acoustic Wave Platform for Conformable and Mechanically Flexible Biosensors

在这个项目中，我们将研究一种新的平台技术来制造灵活的设备，使非侵入性和快速的医疗诊断。由于全球老龄化和癌症/慢性病负担的增加，全球对高效和廉价的移动医疗保健、电子医疗和家庭/护理点系统有巨大的需求。这不仅能够阻止传染病的传播周期，从而减少其影响，而且还使我们能够经常监测健康状况（例如使用可穿戴传感器）并根据需要定制治疗，从而提供更有效的治疗方法。这种设备面临的一个关键挑战是将执行高级诊断所需的所有功能（如样品处理、纯化和传感）集成到低成本、机械灵活的诊断/治疗平台上，从而可以快速、频繁地进行测试（例如在可穿戴贴片应用中）。为了被广泛和有效地采用，柔性诊断需要符合诊断/治疗表面或适应表面形状的变化（如人体），以及兼容大规模和低成本的制造技术，如卷对卷/印刷，同时提供多功能集成采样/净化/传感功能。这些灵活和身体舒适的传感器正在成为新一代个性化生物医学工具的有前途的途径。在这里，我们将利用声波在柔性箔表面传播的机械能，在其上沉积一层结构压电薄膜。通过控制薄膜的方向，我们将能够首次使用单一技术将多种流体操纵功能与高灵敏度传感集成在一起。这将使我们能够大大简化设计和制造限制，从而实现大规模和低成本制造的潜力，大大提高个性化诊断设备的可用性和实用性。我们的平台基于多功能声波模式（集成微流体和传感），与卷对卷制造和薄膜/微加工技术兼容。在过去的几十年里，大量基于集成芯片实验室的微流控和分子传感技术被开发出来，但只有少数成功进入市场，其中一个关键原因是采样（样品选择、收集和制备，如混合、纯化、过滤、洗涤，然后输送到传感器）没有成功地以一种简单、可靠的方式集成到完整的诊断系统中。低成本、高效率的方式。特别是，在微流体（采样）与生物传感（检测）技术的集成方面存在重大挑战，因为每个功能依赖于不同的技术，使得仪器过于复杂，无法实现真正的便携式和兼容的系统。在这项研究中，我们将与工业界合作，开发一种创新的解决方案来整合不同的声学模式，它可以提供不同的样品驱动（采样，净化，传感），使用倾斜角度ZnO薄膜的形成，这样我们就能够在一个平台上产生和控制不同的波模式，即纵波和横波。这将实现具有集成传感和微流体功能的低成本/柔性声波装置。

In this project, we will research a new platform technology to manufacture flexible devices enabling non-invasive and rapid medical diagnostics. Due to global ageing and the increased burden of cancer/chronic diseases, there is a huge demand worldwide for efficient and inexpensive mobile healthcare, e-care, and home/point-of-care systems. These will not only be able to stop the cycle of transmission in infectious diseases, thus reducing their impact, but also allow us to monitor health conditions frequently (e.g. with wearable sensors) and tailor treatment as required, thus providing more efficient therapies. A key challenge for such devices is to integrate all the functions required to perform advanced diagnostics, such as sample manipulation, purification and sensing, onto a low-cost, mechanically flexible diagnostic/treatment platform, such that testing can be performed rapidly and frequently (for example in wearable patch applications). To be widely and effectively adopted, flexible diagnostics need to be conformable to diagnostic/treatment surfaces or to adapt to changes in surface shape (such as the human body), as well as to be compatible with large scale and low cost manufacturing technologies such as roll-to-roll/printing, whilst providing versatile integrated sampling/purification/sensing functions. These flexible and body comfortable sensors are becoming a promising route for new generations of personalised biomedical tools. Here, we will use the mechanical energy propagated by acoustic waves on the surface of flexible foils, onto which we deposited a structured piezo-electric thin film. By controlling the orientation of the film, we will be able, for the first time, to integrate a large variety of fluid manipulation functions together with highly sensitive sensing, using a single technology. This will enable us to simplify design and manufacturing constraints significantly, leading to the potential of using large scale and low-cost manufacturing, drastically enhancing the availability and usefulness of personalised diagnostic devices. Our platform is based on versatile acoustic wave modes (integrating both microfluidics and sensing) compatible with roll-to-roll manufacturing and thin film/microfabrication technologies. In the past decades, a large number of microfluidic and molecular sensing technologies have been developed based on integrated lab-on-chip, however only a few have been successfully introduced into the market, with one key reason for this attrition being that sampling (sample selection, collection and preparation, e.g., mixing, purification, filtering, washing, and then delivering to sensors) has not been successfully integrated into complete diagnosis systems in a simple, low-cost and efficient manner. In particular, there have been significant challenges in the integration of microfluidics (for sampling) with biosensing (detection) technologies, due to the different technologies that each function relies on, rendering the instrumentation too complex for truly portable and conformable systems. In this research, in partnership with industry, we will develop an innovative solution to integrate different acoustic modalities, which can provide different actuations of the sample (sampling, purification, sensing), using the formation of inclined angled ZnO thin films, such that we are able to generate and control different wave modes, i.e., longitudinal and shear waves on one platform. This will realise low-cost/flexible acoustic wave devices with integrated sensing and microfluidic functions.