A miniature sensor integrating multiple detection technologies for evaluating water pollution

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There exists an urgent and great need for a portable system to monitor water quality in both developed and developing countries. Currently, there is no commercial test available to satisfy this demand, as only accredited laboratories can perform such evaluations. Conventional physicochemical techniques like chromatography must be performed by qualified technicians, and require large, bulky and expensive equipment. Moreover, miniaturisation of analytical instrumentation is one of dominant trends within the chemical and biological sciences. Miniaturization of diagnostic devices not only affords portability and significant cost reductions but also performance gains in terms of speed, analytical efficiency, automation and reproducibility. Through miniaturization, microfluidic technologies may allow successful integration of all the relevant steps on a single device. In order to solve this problem we have developed a phytoplankton (alga and cyanobacteria) based detection system implemented in a microfluidic platform. Algae and cyanobacteria are natural biosensors, since they integrate the biological effects of the compound mixtures in their environment and respond by metabolic changes that are relevant to potential toxic effects. In phytoplankton-based sensors, the organism responses are measured in real time by various detection mechanisms that can be optical, chemical or electrical in nature. In recent years, our group has showed the enormous potential of the combining of organic optoelectronic devices with microfluidic applied to toxicity measurement biosensor based on algae and cyanobacteria and we want to capitalize on those developments though this project. The primary objective of the project will be then to model, fabricate, test and package a fully integrated demonstration prototype biosensor for the phytoplankton based detection of chemical species, which will be used to attract the interest of potential partners for further development and subsequently for commercialization.