NBMC tackles human performance monitoring, medical diagnostics
The Nano-Bio Manufacturing Consortium (NBMC) workshop held Oct. 17 at Northeastern University focused on nanotechnology applications involving human-performance measurement and medical diagnostics.
The event was preceded by an afternoon tour of Northeastern’s George J. Kostas Nanoscale Technology and Manufacturing Research Center. Sivasubramanian Somu, research associate professor at Northeastern, welcomed attendees to the tour by explaining that if you want to make money from nanotechnology-based products, you have to make them cheap.
But, he said, nanotechnology presents challenges. Northeastern can help meet the challenges with what Somu called a rubber-stamp approach, which lets you replicate a design over and over on flexible or hard substrates. The center on the Northeastern campus offers a class 10 clean room and a variety of instruments for spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, surface profiling, spectrum analysis, and nanomanipulation. “Kostas is open to all users,” he said. “We want more users to come and reap the benefit.”
Malcolm Thompson of the NBMC welcomed attendees to the workshop. He said the consortium formed last year at the behest of the Air Force Research Laboratory to improve human-performance monitoring by measuring factors such as blood pressure, skin temperature, and ECG.
Thompson said NBMC’s vision is the integration of materials and manufacturing within a common platform to address flexible device applications through the collaboration of universities, the government, and industry.
Rich Chaney of American Semiconductor elaborated on flexibility. You can put a flexible strap on a watch, he said, but the watch itself is not really flexible. Wearable technology tethered to a hard box doesn’t lead to customer satisfaction, he said, and people won’t want to wear the product. “We need to cut the cord and get away from those rigid boxes,” he said. “Put everything into the sensor.”
Ahmed Busnaina of Northeastern University’s Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN) elaborated on points made by Somu during the tour. Busnaina noted that the cost of a printed sensor can be one-tenth or one-hundredth the cost of a silicon sensor. A way to fabricate such sensors is to use CHN’s damascene nanoscale offset printing process, he said, which leverages directed assembly and transfer technologies developed at CHN.
The process is implemented by the Nanoscale Offset Printing System, or NanoOPS, a prototype of which was demonstrated in September, Busnaina said. The process could yield carbon nanotube sensors on silicon or polymer substrates. He cited, in particular, a nanotube biosensor for metabolic monitoring of sweat—a substance of particular interest to several presenters at the workshop. Unlike blood, sweat can be monitored noninvasively and continuously. “Any biomarker in the blood will exist in sweat,” he said.
Jeffrey Morse of the University of Massachusetts Amherst described work with GE Global Research and the University of Cincinnati on low-cost wearable sensors for monitoring cognition and stress biomarkers in sweat. The goal, he said, is to monitor as many biomarkers as possible. The biomarkers (such as cortisol, dopamine, oxytocin, glucose, lactic acid, and orexin-A) in turn indicate levels of cognition, exercise, and stress.
William Adams of the Corey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut described the institute’s work in preventing sudden death in sports. The institute is named after a National Football League player who died of heatstroke in 2001. The institute works to track and develop training goals, assess workload, evaluate risk of injury, and create a balance of under- vs. over-training. The researchers want to monitor factors such as hydration status, heat-accumulation status, heart rate, sweat electrolytes, and environmental conditions including temperature and humidity.
Other workshop presentations covered topics as varied as fabrication of RF antennas and medical diagnostics. Erik S. Handy of SI2 Technologies said his company conducts R&D for RF applications such as antennas. The company’s roadmap includes transistors that double as biosensors. The company also is studying blast dosimeters involving helmet-mounted sensors that measure how much trauma a warfighter has suffered. The technique would allow nonexperts to record their own EEGs. Apart from military applications, he envisions a $30 portable brain recorder that would find use in sports and education.
And William Peter of MIT described the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN), which performs basic research and supports the transitioning of its technology to the Army and industry partners to meet defense and commercial dual-use needs. The “S” in ISN is for soldier, he said, but the technology can apply to sailors, marines, and civilians.
Projects involve photonic crystal nanostructures and optoelectronic fiber devices. Nanocrystal dye constructs that respond to pH, O2, and glucose, for instance, can serve as environmental reporters for medical diagnostics. Other medical applications involve fiber devices and smart fabrics that enable full body sensing. And OmniGuide, Peter said, employs a hollow-core fiber for use in laryngology, gynecology, neurosurgery, and otology. Next-generation drug and vaccine delivery systems will be nanoparticle-based systems that offer unprecedented delivery efficiency and efficacy, he added.