GE’s Global Research labs have just won another research award from the National Institutes of Health, this time to further develop a real-time, wearable sensor that can detect ultra-trace concentrations of airborne chemical threats. The research is being led by Radislav Potyrailo, who GE Reports readers recently met in an an audio slideshow that described the work his team is doing on the chemical sensing properties found in the nanostructures of butterfly wings. Says Radislav of the breakthrough’s potential: “GE’s sensing platform could be readily adapted to many other interesting applications. For example, it could be used to analyze a person’s breath. Simply breathing on the sensor could potentially pick up biomarkers that serve as an early signal to the presence of certain diseases such as diabetes or cancer and metabolic disorders.”
Early warning: This optical microscope photo shows the wearable sensor that is under development. It would use radio-frequency identification, or RFID, technology — which tracks objects with radio waves — and combine it with gas detection abilities. Currently, RFID technology is widely used to track everything from airport baggage to products as they wind their way from factories to store shelves.
As Radislav says on his Global Research blog, there are already excellent sensors available that measure body temperature, carbon monoxide, pH levels in water, and even nanoparticles that are being used on pregnancy test strips, just to name a few. Because of this, he says, “at scientific conferences, during visits of national labs and universities, and at many other occasions, I have been asked numerous times ‘What’s so special about your sensors that you are working on?’” The answer is that existing sensors fall short in an array of practical situations.
Say hello to my little friend: Because GE’s sensor can be made at a size smaller than a penny, it could be part of a typical identification badge and serve as a pre-emptive or early warning for people about the presence of airborne chemical agents.
Radislav says the GE team is focusing on detection in complex environments where existing sensors have too many false positive responses. Examples include air at a workplace, in cities, on a battlefield, in packaged food containers and exhaled air from medical patients. “For these and many other demanding applications, existing sensors suffer from responses to not only chemicals of interest in the air but also to numerous interferences that are present at much higher concentrations than the chemical of interest,” he says.
The new NIH award follows one that GE Global Research received last month as part of its work to slash the cost and time of sequencing an entire human genome.
Lab race: The $2 million award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health, is being used by Radislav, pictured above, and his team to accelerate the development of technology that must be able to detect trace concentrations; that is portable; uses minimal power; and operates autonomously for extended periods of time.
* Read the sensor announcement
* Read Radislav’s full Global Research blog post
* Read Radislav’s previous blog posts
* Read coverage from the Associated Press
* Read coverage in The Times-Union
Learn more about Global Research’s latest work in these GE Reports stories and videos:
* “The GE Genius Series: Breakthroughs from butterflies”
* “The GE Genius Series: Thin is in with OLEDs”
* “$1,000 genome project advances to NIH round two”
* “A $1000 Genetic Map”
* “A look in the lab with GE’s bioscience researchers”
* “Vital signs to go wireless with GE’s body sensors”
* “GE’s software helps Shanghai breathe easier”
* “GE unveils holographic disc breakthrough”
