A new glucose sensor or portable device for measuring blood sugar widely used by diabetic patients and considered the least intrusive monitoring system to date It was recently revealed by researchers at the University Park campus of Penn State University in the United States.
The researchers released the details of the low-cost, non-invasive sensor that can detect glucose in sweat through biosensors and bioelectronics.
Development of the glucose sensor was led by Dr. Huanyu Cheng, and Dorothy Quiggle, from Penn State’s Department of Engineering, Science, and Mechanics.
The researchers built the device first with laser-induced graphene (LIG), a material consisting of one atom thick layers of carbon in various forms.
The graphene in the glucose sensor has high electrical conductivity and a convenient manufacturing time of just seconds.
Nevertheless, the team eventually chose nickel because of its strong glucose sensitivity, according to Professor Cheng, who combined it with gold to reduce the potential risks of an allergic reaction.
The researchers hypothesized that the LIG equipped with the nickel-gold alloy would be able to detect low concentrations of glucose in sweat on the skin’s surface.
A glucose sensor like no other
Although the glucose concentration in sweat is approximately 100 times lower than the concentration in blood, Penn State’s glucose sensor is sensitive enough to accurately measure its concentration in sweat and blood.
The sensitivity of the nickel-gold alloy allowed Cheng’s team to exclude enzymes, which are often used to measure glucose in more invasive, commercially available devices.
“An enzyme sensor must be kept at a certain temperature and pH, and the enzyme cannot be stored long-term,” says Cheng.
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“A non-enzymatic glucose sensor (like this case) is advantageous in terms of stable performance and sensitivity to glucose regardless of these changes,” adds the scientist.
Non-enzymatic sensors require an alkaline solution, which can damage the skin and generally limits the usability of the device. To solve this problem, Cheng and his team connected a microfluidic chamber to the LIG alloy.
This chamber is porous to allow a range of motion, such as stretching or squashing, and is connected to a collection inlet that passes sweat into the solution without allowing it to touch the skin.
The basic solution interacts with glucose molecules to produce a compound that reacts with the alloy. This reaction triggers an electrical signal that indicates the glucose concentration in sweat.
“With the smallest alkaline solution chamber, the entire device is about the size of a coin and it is flexible enough to maintain a secure attachment to the human body, ”says Cheng.
“We want to work with doctors and other healthcare providers to see how we can apply this technology to daily monitoring of a patient,” Cheng said.
In the same vein, he adds that “This glucose sensor serves as a key example to show that we can improve the detection of biomarkers in sweat at extremely low concentrations ”.
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