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，以制造能够实现非侵入性和快速医疗诊断的柔性设备。由于全球老龄化和癌症/慢性病负担的增加，全球对高效、廉价的移动医疗保健、电子护理和家庭/护理点系统的需求巨大。这不仅能够阻止传染病的传播循环，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)，并根据需要进行量身定制的治疗，从而提供更有效的治疗方法。这类设备的一个关键挑战是将执行高级诊断所需的所有功能集成到低成本、机械灵活的诊断/治疗平台上，以使测试可以快速而频繁地执行(例如在可穿戴贴片应用中)。为了广泛和有效地采用，灵活的诊断方法需要符合诊断/治疗表面或适应表面形状(如人体)的变化，并与大规模和低成本制造技术(如卷到卷/打印)兼容，同时提供多功能的集成采样/净化/传感功能。这些灵活且舒适的传感器正在成为新一代个性化生物医学工具的一条有希望的路线。在这里，我们将利用声波在柔性薄膜表面传播的机械能，在其上沉积一种具有结构的压电薄膜。通过控制胶片的方向，我们将首次能够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。这将使我们能够显著简化设计和制造限制，带来使用大规模和低成本制造的潜力，极大地提高个性化诊断设备的可用性和实用性。我们的平台基于兼容卷对卷制造和薄膜/微制造技术的多种声波模式(集成微流体和传感)。在过去的几十年里，基于集成的芯片实验室开发了大量的微流控和分子传感技术，但成功推向市场的技术寥寥无几，造成这种磨损的一个关键原因是采样(样品的选择、收集和准备，例如混合、纯化、过滤、洗涤，然后传递到传感器)没有以简单、低成本和高效的方式成功地集成到完整的诊断系统中。特别是，由于每项功能所依赖的技术不同，在微流控(用于采样)与生物传感(检测)技术的整合方面存在重大挑战，这使得仪器过于复杂，无法实现真正的便携和整合系统。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集成不同的声学模式，该解决方案可以通过形成倾斜的氧化锌薄膜来提供样品的不同驱动(采样、净化、传感)，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控功能的低成本/灵活的声波设备。

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.