Award Abstract # 1660233
SBIR Phase II: Multiplexed Smartphone-Based Handheld Sensor for Ion Contaminants Detection in Environmental Water

NSF Org: TI
Translational Impacts
Recipient:
Initial Amendment Date: March 17, 2017
Latest Amendment Date: March 17, 2017
Award Number: 1660233
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Muralidharan Nair
TI
 Translational Impacts
TIP
 Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships
Start Date: March 15, 2017
End Date: February 28, 2019 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $717,250.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $717,250.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2017 = $717,250.00
History of Investigator:
  • Logan Liu (Principal Investigator)
    mobosens@gmail.com
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: MOBOSENSE LLC
172 Corliss Dr.
Moraga
CA  US  94556-1206
(510)684-7629
Sponsor Congressional District: 10
Primary Place of Performance: MOBOSENSE LLC
60 Hazelwood Drive
Champaign
IL  US  61820-7460
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
13
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): NN2TJT6ZHHS1
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): SBIR Phase II
Primary Program Source: 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 1185, 5373, 6840, 8035
Program Element Code(s): 537300
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.084

ABSTRACT

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is the potential dollars saved in healthcare costs to environmental protection. The greatest overall savings cannot be judged only in dollars, but in helping to preserve human lives and end diseases and illnesses caused by problems with water. The product will provide unique opportunity to populations to test their water for safety and health benefits, in locations where good water treatment facilities do not exist. The water testing equipment market is divided into low-end, low-cost on-field test equipment (such as nitrate strip) that gives qualitative information about the analytes, and high-end testing devices used in labs (such as mass spectrometer) providing accurate quantitative information. If successful, the sensor technology will bridge the gap by providing low-cost, sensitive, accurate tools for quantitative measurement of analytes. The portable, low-cost, plug and play sensor product will cater to the needs of the water quality monitoring market. The product will also mobilize ?citizen scientist? to partake in environmental data collection and popularize sustainability education.

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 project is expected to lead to the development of a multiplexed, low-cost, portable instrument capable of making real time measurements of nitrate and phosphate in water and soil samples. The sensor system for this instrument will be based on the highly selective nitrate and phosphate reducing working electrodes along with reagents contained in the microfluidics to perform real-time sensing without sample preparation. As the concentrations of phosphate in solution are usually small, and since the inorganic phosphate in a water sample is changing due to biological processes, time is often a critical factor in taking measurements of phosphate. Due to these factors, there is a need for sensitive, inexpensive, and portable instruments in order to monitor the eutrophication process effectively. Currently available instruments for making phosphate measurements in the field do not adequately address these needs. Phase I development showed that disposable electrode with microfluidic integration, and smartphone app controlled sensor is capable of detecting nitrate with high sensitivity and specificity. Phase II proposal is focused on commercialization of the nitrate sensor and development of multiplexed sensor platform to detect multiple ions such as nitrate, and phosphate for larger commercial market.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Prasad, Alisha and Tran, Tiffany and Gartia, Manas "Multiplexed Paper Microfluidics for Titration and Detection of Ingredients in Beverages" Sensors , v.19 , 2019 10.3390/s19061286 Citation Details

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

The soil macronutrients, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K), are essential elements for crop growth. The application of commercial N, P, and K fertilizers has contributed to a tremendous increase in yields of agricultural crops that feed the world’s population. However, excessive use of these fertilizers has been cited as a source of contamination of surface and groundwater besides increasing farming costs. Agricultural industries, farmers, environmentalists, scientists, and government regulators need low-cost, portable, reliable, accurate, easy to use, and real time sensor equipment to test and measure contamination in water for the health and safety of citizen and the environment.

 

The current nitrate and phosphorus testing products in the market are either complicated and time consuming, or lack of precision and qualitative or expensive and vulnerable to interfering ions. In comparison, MoboSense product provides real-time and continuous nitrate/phosphate ion measurement with reduced cost, smartphone integrated micro and nanoelectronic sensors. Mobosense product can help eliminate the labor cost of building GPS enabled data map by employing distributed sensor network, internet-connected crowd sensing and cloud computing.

 

The major technical goal and accomplishments of the Phase II project are the development of a multiplexed, low-cost, portable and distributed instrument capable of making real time measurements of nitrate and phosphate in water and commercialization of the nitrate sensor. The technical outcomes include the smartphone controlled nitrate and phosphate sensor product for portable sensing applications as well as distributed nitrate sensors for long-term continuous sensing in field water and soil. The mobile sensor quality and functionality are greatly enhanced in the project from the aspects of robustness, cost-effectiveness and connectivity through lab experiment and field trial testing.   Upon requests from many potential customers and collaborators, we also transformed the mobile sensor into a distributed version for long-term automated continuous nitrate sensing in the field without human intervention. The products are presented in the online product exhibition and sales website.

 

Scientifically the portable and distributed sensor system is based on the highly selective nitrate and phosphate working electrodes to perform real-time and continuous sensing without sample preparation. The sensor developed in this project will bridge the technology gap by providing low-cost, sensitive, accurate tools for quantitative measurement of analytes. The portable and affordable sensor product will cater to the needs of the home water quality monitoring and the distributed sensor and sensor networks will be offered to the research and education communities. The distributed sensors with data storage, edge computing and cloud processing software development associated with the water sensor hardware will potentially bring new crowd data sourcing method to big data research and internet of things. The product will also mobilize both researchers and “citizen scientists” to partake in environmental data collection and popularize sustainability education. The product provides a new crowd sensing and sourcing tool for environment conservation and protection.

 


Last Modified: 09/18/2019
Modified by: Logan Liu

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