Wearable Smart Chemical Sensors

Toxic Industrial Chemicals (TICs) are chemical substances that produce toxic effects if given in sufficient quantities and/or exposed for long durations. TICs are a great concern for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since it would be easier for terrorists to obtain and use than CAs. There are many commercially available handheld and personal gas monitors to monitor TICs. However, the multi-gas monitors are all bulky (more than 0.75 inches in thickness) and expensive ($500 or more) and they are only used by cities which have a population of 100k or more. Hence, there is a need a low cost multi-gas sensor that costs less than $50 in a wearable form factor. Such wearable sensors will also find use in the much bigger industrial market to monitor worker safety. In this SBIR Project TDA Research, in collaboration with Texas Tech University (TTU), proposes to develop a simple, low cost wearable smart chemical sensor badge that has high sensitivity and selectivity to multiple TICs at trace (low parts per million) concentrations and triggers distinct alarms at permissible exposure limit (PEL), short term exposure limit (STEL) and Time Weighted Average (TWA) concentrations. The wearable smart sensor badge uses a Lab-on-a-chip that will be smaller than 4cm x 4cm x 1 cm and can detect multiple TICs of interest and have a low rate of false alarms, so that easy and widespread deployment can be achieved.