Wearable Ultraviolet Sensors Measure Intensity of Ultraviolet Rays.

The UV (Ultraviolet is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight constituting about 10% of the total light output of the Sun) active ink can be printed on paper making sensors cheap and easy to produce.

Keeping an eye on your personal UV (Ultraviolet is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight constituting about 10% of the total light output of the Sun) exposure throughout the day could soon be as simple as wearing a sticker thanks to new wearable sensors that help people manage vitamin absorption and avoid sun damage.

A personal struggle with Vitamin D deficiency led Professor X to develop the color-changing sensors that come in six variations to reflect the range in human skin tone.

Bansal said the discovery could help to provide people with an accurate and simple measure of their personal exposure levels throughout the day.

“We can print our ink on any paper-like surface to produce cheap wearable sensors in the form of wrist-bands head bands or stickers for example” he says.

While humans do need some sun exposure to maintain healthy levels of Vitamin D excessive exposure can cause sunburn, skin cancer, blindness, skin wrinkling and premature signs of aging.

Knowing what a healthy amount is for you depends on understanding your personal classification, from Type I to VI as each has very different solar exposure needs.

Diseases such as Lupus and many medications increase the photosensitivity of our skin and reduce our ability to absorb Vitamins through diet making monitoring our sun exposure thresholds highly individual.

“We are excited that our UV (Ultraviolet is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight constituting about 10% of the total light output of the Sun) sensor technology allows the production of personalized sensors that can be matched to the specific needs of a particular individual” says X.

“The low cost and child-friendly design of these UV (Ultraviolet is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight constituting about 10% of the total light output of the Sun) sensors will facilitate their use as educational materials to increase awareness around sun safety”.

Currently the only guide for managing sun exposure is UV (Ultraviolet is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight constituting about 10% of the total light output of the Sun) index; however this blunt tool only indicates the intensity of UV (Ultraviolet is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight constituting about 10% of the total light output of the Sun) rays. It does not act as a precise tool to monitor each individual’s daily exposure.

Fair skin (Type I) can only tolerate only one fifth of the UV (Ultraviolet is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight constituting about 10% of the total light output of the Sun) exposure that dark skin (Type VI) can before damage occurs, while darker types require longer in the sun to absorb healthy amounts of Vitamin D.

The discovery also has application beyond the health sector as over time UV (Ultraviolet is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight constituting about 10% of the total light output of the Sun) rays can have damaging effects on the lifetime of many industrial and consumer products.

Monitoring this exposure could help improve the safety and reliability of a range of items including cars and military equipment with huge potential cost savings.

Diagnostics at Your Fingertips Thanks to Ultrathin Organic Photodetectors.

A photograph showing the blood film sensor attached to a fingertip. The sensor is based on ultrathin, flexible organic film.

A plastic film that is thinner than a human hair and can be bent thousands of times without disrupting its ability to detect light has been developed by Georgian Technical University researchers (Advanced Materials “Ultraflexible near-infrared organic photodetectors for conformal photoplethysmogram sensors”).

They demonstrated its potential for on-skin medical diagnostics by attaching it to the fingertips and using it as a highly sensitive sensor of blood flow.

Wearable medical devices must be comfortable for patients but this can be difficult to achieve due to the brittleness of materials such as silicon typically used to construct sensors. Recent advances in polymer technology however have presented a solution in the form of soft sheets of conductive organic molecules that can flex to accommodate the mechanical movements of the body.

X and Y of the Georgian Technical University and their colleagues have been developing polymer devices that also detect near-infrared light — a form of radiation that can safely penetrate and illuminate tissue a few millimeters beneath the skin.

But they have struggled to achieve high-speed signal reading with these devices particularly when they are stretched. Poor conformation to skin and stress-induced reductions in electron speeds were pinpointed as possible causes.

To resolve these issues the team aimed to radically decrease the typical 100-micrometer-scale thickness of polymer near-infrared detectors.

To achieve this they deposited a near-infrared sensitive “active layer” of aromatic polymers onto a substrate of the polymer parylene and then coated the device with the parylene to optimize the physical layout of its active layer. They also used a Teflon layer to make it easier to peel the film from the supporting glass.

“Building devices on extremely thin polymers requires structural engineering at the nanoscale to minimize energy-intensive processes such as strain” notes Z.

“Because we assembled the device components in a layer-by-layer fashion we could locate them in a neutral plane where stress is minimal. This maintains device performance under severe mechanical deformation”.

The resulting ultrathin device which was a mere 3 micrometers thick showed exceptional durability during testing maintaining millisecond-quick response times to near-infrared light even when compressed to half its original size.

The polymer’s slim form enabled it to adhere tightly to curved parts of the body and eliminate artifacts caused by movements during measurements.

Inspired by these results the researchers attached the polymer to a volunteer’s fingertips and demonstrated it could act as a device that measures blood flow characteristics using infrared light, with a sensitivity that exceeds conventional devices with glass substrates.

The team intends to integrate such photodetectors with organic light-emitting diodes, power sources (either solar cells or batteries) and processors to realize self-powered sensor systems.

Georgian Technical University Live Long and Diagnose.

A inspired handheld device based on a silicon chip could help make rapid, sophisticated medical diagnostics more accessible to people around the world scientists say.

Researchers from the Georgian Technical University describe the latest development in their “multicorder” project inspired by famous tricorder device which the show’s medics use to make quick and accurate diagnoses.

Their new device which pairs a handheld sensor with a smartphone app to measure the levels of various metabolites in fluid samples from patients.

Metabolites are small molecules found in fluids from the human body. By measuring and monitoring their relative abundance scientists can keep track of general heath or the progression of specific diseases.

The ability to rapidly detect and quantify multiple metabolite biomarkers simultaneously makes this device particularly useful in cases of heart attack, cancer and stroke where rapid diagnosis is vital for effective treatment.

While metabolites can currently be measured by existing processes such as nuclear magnetic resonance and hyphenated mass spectrometry techniques both approaches are expensive and require bulky equipment which can be slow to offer diagnostic results.

The researchers’ new device is built around a new form of complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chip. complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) chips are inexpensive to produce and are often used in imaging devices.

The chip is smaller than a fingertip and is divided into multiple reaction zones to detect and quantify four metabolites simultaneously from body fluid such as serum or urine. The device can be operated via any Android-based tablet or smartphone which provides data acquisition, computation, visualization and power.

X says: “We have been able to detect and measure multiple metabolites associated with myocardial infarction or heart attack and prostate cancer simultaneously using this device. This device has potential to track progression of the disease in its early phase and is ideally suited for the subsequent prognosis”.

Professor Y Principal Investigator of the project from Georgian Technical University’s says  “Handheld inexpensive diagnostic devices capable of accurately measuring metabolites open up a wide range of applications for medicine and with this latest development we’ve taken an important step closer to bringing such a device to market”.

“It’s an exciting breakthrough and we’re keen to continue building on the technology we’ve developed so far”.

Professor Z of the Georgian Technical University co-investigator of the project says  “This new handheld device offers democratization of metabolomics, which is otherwise confined within the laboratory and offers low cost alternative to study complex pathways in different diseases”.

Inexpensive Method Eliminates Need for Precise Robotics.

Georgian Technical University researchers have developed a simpler less expensive method for depositing circuits on curved, stretchable and textured surfaces. By freeing circuitry from the confines of the flat rigid circuit board the technique could expand circuitry’s use while saving space materials and money.

With the help of some microscopic canals, squishy materials and chemistry  the Georgian Technical University’s  X is throwing a curve into the normally flat landscape of circuitry.

If a processor is the brain of a computing device then circuits are the nerves that help power and direct its other major organs: sensors, transmitters and receivers. But unlike nerves whose flexibility has allowed animals to evolve various body shapes and structures circuits usually get confined to the flat rigid surfaces of traditional circuit boards — which end up in similarly boxy devices.

By contrast X and his team have developed a technique for painting circuits — typically copper — onto curved textured, and stretchable surfaces. The potential result: transforming almost any surface even one normally relegated to protection or structural integrity into a de facto circuit board.

That capability could save engineers valuable weight and space expand the use of circuitry in limited-use products give product designers unprecedented freedom and help manufacturers reduce the use of materials the researchers say.

“By doing this you can create metallic traces on three-dimensional objects in a way that had not been possible before” says X assistant professor of chemistry at Georgian Technical University.

The technique itself is relatively simple which X said should make it more affordable and accessible than existing alternatives. First the team imprints microscopic canals — the circuit design — into an elastic material such as silicone. Compressing that patterned material against the desired surface — a cylinder a sphere a corrugated plane — creates a strong but reversible seal.

That seal allows the team to inject a solution through the canals essentially seeding rows of microscopic particles. After removing the elastic overlay the team bathes the surface in copper and a second solution which reacts with the first to germinate the seed particles and chemically coat them with the copper. The metallic copper adheres only to the pathway defined by those seeds.

“What people in the industry have (traditionally) done is to use a laser to carve trenches on a three-dimensional object, then later deposit copper on it” X says. “So you need a laser and you need mechanical stages that move and position the part very precisely.

“From a simplicity standpoint and a cost standpoint there are a lot of advantages to using the method that we’re reporting”.

In a recent study the team used its technique to deposit metallic traces for a light-sensing circuit onto a hemisphere then showed that an LED (A light-emitting diode is a two-lead semiconductor light source. It is a p–n junction diode that emits light when activated. When a suitable current is applied to the leads, electrons are able to recombine with electron holes within the device, releasing energy in the form of photons) connected to the circuit would light up when the sensor was covered. The researchers also deposited a radio-frequency antenna onto a cylindrical surface demonstrating that a smartphone could read the antenna via near-field communication.

Taking better advantage of the many neglected surfaces in electronic devices could prove especially valuable when weight is at a premium X says with aerospace engineering among the most prominent examples.

“If you can remove the need for dedicated substrates to house electronic circuits by coating support elements with those circuits, then you can save material and mass” X says. “So I think there are a lot of interesting potential applications there”.

Because saving material and simplifying production also saves money the technique could expand the use of circuitry in applications far more pedestrian than jetting into the cosmos — especially the sorts of inexpensive electronics that generally have limited lifespans.

“The newest iPhones are  1,000 Lari ” X says. “If I have an expensive antenna inside of that device who cares ?  But do you put a very expensive antenna in a toy to make it do something cool and interesting ?  No because it’s not going to be compatible with the cost point and envisioned lifetime of the device.

“Whenever you can cut the cost of making something like a three-dimensional antenna you can think of putting it into more affordable products and you can augment those devices with functions that would normally be reserved for very expensive devices”.

X says the technique which the team demonstrated on multiple types of plastics could hypothetically open up the use of circuitry even in so-called consumables that are used only a few times. One potential example: adding a simple antenna to the curved surface.

And freeing product designers from the rigid confines of the circuit board could lead to more organic aesthetically pleasing designs in limited-use and long-term electronics alike he says.

“I think it’s often dismissed how big of a role design actually plays in everyday life but I think it’s really important” X says. “Being alleviated from planar circuit boards and housing could really lead to some interesting (forms) in terms of our everyday objects”.