Abstract

Paper as a High-Tech Material for Printed Point-of-Care Sensors

Firat Guder, Assistant Professor, Imperial College London

Paper is a ubiquitous, flexible, porous and most importantly, a biodegradable material (unlike most synthetic polymers) that is ideally suited for the fabrication of disposable diagnostic sensors, primarily through printing. Printed microfluidic diagnostic devices produced using paper, do not require pumps and other complex components, allowing construction of highly compact miniaturized devices for rapid, multiplex detection of various bioanalytes (DNA, glucose etc.) at the point-of-care. By exploiting the intrinsic properties, paper can even be used for measuring gas-phase analytes such as the moisture content of breath enabling measurement of respiratory activity. In this talk, we will present three examples of our recent diagnostic sensors produced using paper: i) electrofluidic sensors with integrated microfluidic structures and electronics capable of energy storage and electrochemical analysis, ii) DNA-based sensors produced via direct synthesis of nucleic acids on paper, iii) printed internet-enabled electrical respiration sensors for measuring respiratory activity of human subjects. Paper-based sensors are produced by a series of simple methods of fabrication, therefore, they are low-cost and disposable, ideal for use at the point-of-care including resource limited settings.