PFI-TT: Plastic Electronic Gas Sensors for Health Monitoring via Mobile Devices

这项创新技术转化伙伴关系（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发用于移动设备的柔性电子材料，这些材料可以检测、识别气体，并将结果报告给用户。设计的材料和电路可以精确地监测与人体健康状况有关的气体，使普通民众能够更好地控制自己的健康状况。新材料的功能将增加对气体传感器如何工作的科学理解，以及哪种设计最适合移动设备技术的不断进步。该项目的创新源于基于塑料的电子产品的最新进展，以达到具有代谢和呼吸问题的设备用户的广泛市场。一个额外的社会效益将是在电子和材料技术以及商业化途径方面对本科生、研究生和博士后进行教育和培训。其中一些学生将从历史上的黑人大学招募，从而扩大在技术翻译生态系统中的代表性。拟议的项目解决了缺乏对环境或呼吸中的气体有选择性反应的电子电路的问题。所提出的传感器将与常用的移动设备集成，制造成本低廉，并且不需要高温循环，从而强调移动设备供电和热管理的能力。该研究的目标是制备具有化学官能团和形态的聚合物，以识别具有中等化学反应性的气体，在电路和阵列中使用这些聚合物，即使在存在干扰气体（如水蒸气）的情况下，也能对特定气体产生一组响应，并配置电路，使其与移动设备的电源和信息传输电路电子耦合。结果将是指定小组（4-6组）聚合物，这些聚合物在与健康相关的浓度（例如百万分之一）下对最感兴趣的气体提供响应模式，并设计最大限度延长使用寿命、可重复性和移动设备兼容性的电路。主要方法有聚合物合成、聚合物薄膜和电极沉积、电子性能表征和气体响应评价。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is to develop flexible electronic materials for mobile devices that can detect gases, identify them, and report the results to users. The materials and circuits will be designed so gases related to human health conditions can be monitored precisely, allowing the general population to take greater control of their health status. The new material functions will add to the scientific understanding of how gas sensors work, and what designs will fit best with ongoing advances in mobile device technologies. The innovations of this project stem from recent advances in plastic-based electronics to reach an extensive market of device users with metabolic and respiratory issues. An additional societal benefit will be the education and training of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students in the electronics and materials technologies and pathways to commercialization. Some of these students will be recruited from an historically Black college, thus broadening representation in the technology translation ecosystem.The proposed project addresses the lack of electronic circuits that respond selectively to gases in the environment or breath. The proposed sensors will be integrated with commonly used mobile devices, are inexpensive to manufacture, and do not require high temperature cycles that stress the capacities of mobile device powering and thermal management. The objectives of the research are to prepare polymers with chemical functional groups and morphologies to recognize gases with moderate chemical reactivity, use these polymers in circuits and arrays to create a set of responses to specific gases even in the presence of interfering gases such as water vapor, and configure the circuits so they are electronically coupled to the power and information transfer circuitry of mobile devices. The outcome will be the designation of small sets (4-6) of polymers that give response patterns to gases of greatest interest at health-relevant concentrations (e.g., 1 part per million) and circuit designs that maximize longevity, repeatability, and mobile device compatibility. The main methods are polymer synthesis, polymer film and electrode deposition, electronic property characterization, and gas response evaluation.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.