Wearable Organic Electric Film RFID Sensors for Monitoring of Airborne Toxicants

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Development of wearable sensors for point-of-contact, near-real time monitoring of exposure to environmental chemical species is critical to the success of studies of diverse populations. The demand for these sensors is driv- en by the yet unmet need for wearable sensors to simultaneously and selectively measure multiple analytes with negligible power consumption. In the proposed program, GE Global Research team will meet these require- ments for wearable sensors through the development of a new sensing platform that will dramatically decrease the complexity of accurate monitoring of airborne toxicants such as volatile organic compounds as well as re- ducing and oxidizing gases. The proposed sensor system will employ a novel sensing approach recently devel- oped at GE Global Research that utilizes resonant antenna structures of passive inductively coupled radio-fre- quency identification (RFID) sensors with organic electronic films that will serve as analyte-sensing coatings. This new sensing approach will provide selective quantitation of toxic volatile species with sub-ppm detection limits in presence of uncontrolled variations of ambient humidity. This response selectivity will be achieved not with an array of these sensors but with a single sensor. Such capability will be accomplished by capitalizing on (1) molecular recognition of gases by organic electronic polymers using several vapor-response mechanisms that act simultaneously, (2) new design of sensor transducer to fully probe these vapor-polymer interactions, and (3) standard multivariate analysis of the complex impedance response of the resonance sensor antenna structure. Developed sensors will be interrogated by a matchbox-sized, wearable sensor reader that will relate the findings to a local base station for a long-range transmission. The assembled research team has significant and recog- nized practical knowledge in chemical sensor design, synthesis of organic electronic polymers, low-power RF communications, and multivariate signal processing. This expertise will be coupled with key preliminary results that will facilitate the success of the proposed program. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: An unmet need for wearable sensors to simultaneously and selectively measure multiple analytes with negligible power consumption is a strong driving force in the development of new sensing concepts. In the proposed pro- gram, the team will employ a novel sensing approach that utilizes resonant antenna structures of passive induc- tively coupled radio-frequency identification (RFID) sensors with organic electronic films that will serve as ana- lyte-sensing coatings. This new sensing approach will provide a wearable, cost-effective, selective sensor for de- tection of toxic volatile species.