Nano-enabled sensors, electronics, and energy sources on polymer, paper, and thread substrates.
Mostafalu, Pooria.
2015
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Abstract: Over the
past decades, design and development of portable devices for monitoring of biomarkers
especially for at risk patients is receiving considerable attention. These devices are
either single use diagnostic platforms, wearable on body or on fabric, or they are
implanted close to the tissue and organ that it monitors and cures. Sensors, energy
sources, and data acquisition devices ... read moreare the main components of a such monitoring
platform. Sensors collect the information using bio-recognition tools such as enzymes
and antibodies. Then, the transducers (electrodes, fluorophore, etc) convert it to the
appropriate format, for instance electrical and optical signals. After that, data
acquisition system amplies and digitizes the signal and transfers the data to the
recording instruments for further processing. Moreover, energy sources are necessary for
powering the sensors and electronics. In wearable and implantable applications, these
devices need to be flexible, light weight and biocompatible, and their performance
should be similar to their rigid counterparts. In this dissertation we address these
requirement for wearable and implantable devices. We showed integrated sensors,
electronics, and energy sources on flexible polymers, paper, and thread. These devices
provide many advantages for monitoring of the physiological condition of a patient and
treatment accordingly. Real-time capability of the platform was enabled using wireless
telemetry. One of the major innovations of this dissertation is the use of thread as a
substrate for making medical diagnostic devices. While conventional substrates (glass,
silicon, polyimide, PDMS etc) hold great promise for making wearable and implantable
devices, their overall structure and form has remained essentially two dimensional,
limiting their function to tissue surfaces such as skin. However, the ability to
integrate functional components such as sensors, actuators, and electronics in a way
that they penetrate multiple layers of tissues in a 3D topology would be a significant
surgical advance. We have devised an integrated thread-based diagnostic (TDD) system
with the ability to measure physical (strain and temperature) and chemical (pH and
glucose) markers in the body in vivo. Such device was made from threads, which have been
widely used in the apparel industry and is readily available as a low-cost biocompatible
material.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2015.
Submitted to the Dept. of Electrical Engineering.
Advisor: Sameer Sonkusale.
Committee: Ali Khademhosseini, Qiaobing Xu, Valencia Joyner Koomson, and Mehmet Dokmeci.
Keywords: Electrical engineering, Nanotechnology, and Biomedical engineering.read less - ID:
- v979vf75h
- Component ID:
- tufts:21486
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
