Your Smartphone can give the pregnancy report
According to them, the readings of the sensor can run on a smartphone through an application, which provide real-time results. When properly provisioned, its user can monitor multiple types of body fluids which include blood, saliva, sweat, breath or urine. In case of medical applications, the readings can be combined with the GPS signal of a smartphone and users can then be given information of the nearby next drug store, hospital or the ambulance, the researchers said.
The sensor uses phenomenon of surface plasmon resonance, which takes place when light causes electrons on the surface of a thin film to jostle - to notice the composition of a liquid or the presence of particular biomolecules or trace gases.
"We have the potential to develop small and robust lab-on-a-chip devices for smartphones. So, surface plasmon resonance sensors could become ubiquitous now," said Kort Bremer, co-author of the new study with Bernhard Roth, director, Hanover Centre for Optical Technologies (HOT), University of Hanover.
Surface plasmon resonance is a occurrence commonly used for biosensing, but requires bulky lab equipment involving both a light detector and light source. Smartphones already have both of these, allowing the minimalist, U-shaped device the researchers designed to consist solely of a 400-micrometre diameter core multimode fibre with a silver-coated sensing region.
Bremer carefully excised the polymer covering from a 10 millimetre segment of the optics cable to expose the bare 400 micrometre diameter glass fibre core. He then cleaned and subjected it to a silver-coating process, added a small to pour the solutions and polished both ends of the fibre to 45 degree angled faces.
They were then adhered to the phone's case and, thus, to its camera and LED. In further experiments, the device's sensitivity was tested using concentrations of glycerol, and the team confirmed it was on par with existing equipment, at a fraction of the cost and size.
