Low-Cost Microfluidic Sensors with Smart Hydrogel Patterned Arrays Using Electronic Resistive Channel Sensing for Readout

Low-Cost Microfluidic Sensors with Smart Hydrogel Patterned Arrays Using Electronic Resistive Channel Sensing for Readout

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There is a strong commercial need for inexpensive point-of-use sensors for monitoring disease biomarkers or environmental contaminants in drinking water.Point-of-use sensors that employ smart polymer hydrogels as recognition elements can be tailored to detect almost any target analyte, but often suffer from long response times.Hence, we describe here a fabrication process that can be used to manufacture low-cost point-of-use hydrogel-based microfluidics sensors with short response times.In this process, mask-templated UV photopolymerization is used 2006 nissan altima radio to produce arrays of smart hydrogel pillars inside sub-millimeter channels located upon microfluidics devices.When these pillars contact aqueous solutions containing a target analyte, they swell or shrink, thereby changing the resistance of the microfluidic channel to ionic current flow when a small bias voltage is applied to the system.

Hence resistance measurements can be used to transduce hydrogel swelling changes into electrical signals.The read more only instrumentation required is a simple portable potentiostat that can be operated using a smartphone or a laptop, thus making the system suitable for point of use.Rapid hydrogel response rate is achieved by fabricating arrays of smart hydrogels that have large surface area-to-volume ratios.