RESEARCHERS at Curtin University of Technology have completed work on a technology that will provide an unparalleled ability to explore diverse environments, from oceans and rivers to the human body.

Using ion-selective electrode technology, Curtin researchers are developing a hand-held, field deployable or implantable device using self-calibrating sensors that will be able to cheaply and easily monitor pollution in rivers, or heparin levels as a clotting factor in human blood.

Self-calibrating sensor technology from Curtin opening new vistas for research and exploration / Image: Istockphoto

Director of Curtin’s Nanochemistry Research Institute Professor Richard Bakker says the technology improves existing methods to make the sensors more accurate, powerful and independent of human control.

“In all the history of potentiometry, there has never been an intention for it to work without operating control. So, we’ve been very interested in this topic for a while now, trying to work with the existing materials which are very sophisticated, very powerful to develop a different technique, and that is what this breakthrough is about.

“We have looked at several ways of doing this and we think the most promising way is to read the sensors out by depleting the sample. This is only possible if you bring the sample out into a thin layer form, confining the volume that you would like to detect.

“This is our technology that we’re developing, using materials that have been used for completely different readout principles so we have to adapt them to some extent and then bring them into this very robust readout principle.”

Professor Bakker says these self-calibrating sensors will ultimately provide researchers and medical practitioners with the ability to conduct a greater range of environmental and medical monitoring.

“The key application is for any kind of remote sensing, that does not allow researchers to be close to the subject or does not allow very complex or applications where you do not have the freedom to change the sample.

“One area of focus is in coastal waters, where we will try and get far more robust readouts that could be deployed to the fields, fresh water and coastal waters without human intervention.

“The other area of applied research concerns diagnostics, human out care. Initially our efforts will go to establish a simpler system for clinical diagnostics that does not require as much fluidics because you don’t need to recalibrate, so we can make this much cheaper and have an advantage over the current technology.”

While these two areas will be the primary areas of focus, the real ‘holy grail’ says Professor Bakker, is the ability to implant the sensor in a human body and in fact have repeated measurements that are reliable.

“This is something that with the current read out principle is simply impossible, because you do not have the capacity to recalibrate within the human body.”

The research is supported by CSIRO Future Manufacturing Flagship Cluster funding and the Australian Research Council, and commenced in early 2009.

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