Nunez-Bajo, E. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2021

PEDOT:PSS-Modified Cotton Conductive Thread for Mass Manufacturing of Textile-Based Electrical Wearable Sensors by Computerized Embroidery

The textile industry has advanced processes that allow computerized manufacturing of garments at large volumes with precise visual patterns. The industry, however, is not able to mass fabricate clothes with seamlessly integrated wearable sensors, using its precise methods of fabrication (such as computerized embroidery). This is due to the lack of conductive threads compatible with standard manufacturing methods used in industry. In this work, we report a low-cost poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS)-modified cotton conductive thread (PECOTEX) that is compatible with computerized embroidery. The PECOTEX was produced using a crosslinking reaction between PEDOT:PSS and cotton thread using divinyl sulfone as the crosslinker. We extensively characterized and optimized our formulations to create a mechanically robust conductive thread that can be produced in large quantities in a roll-to-roll fashion. Using PECOTEX and a domestic computerized embroidery machine, we produced a series of wearable electrical sensors including a facemask for monitoring breathing, a t-shirt for monitoring heart activity and textile-based gas sensors for monitoring ammonia as technology demonstrators. PECOTEX has the potential to enable mass manufacturing of new classes of low-cost wearable sensors integrated into everyday clothes.

bioengineering↗

bioRxiv2020

Ultra-Low-Cost Integrated Silicon-based Transducer for On-Site, Genetic Detection of Pathogens

Rapid screening and low-cost diagnosis play a crucial role in choosing the correct course of intervention e.g., drug therapy, quarantine, no action etc. when dealing with highly infectious pathogens. This is especially important if the disease-causing agent has no effective treatment, such as the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (the pathogen causing COVID-19), and shows no or similar symptoms to other common infections. We report a silicon-based integrated Point-of-Need (PoN) transducer (TriSilix) that can chemically-amplify and detect pathogen-specific sequences of nucleic acids (NA) quantitatively in real-time. Unlike other silicon-based technologies, TriSilix can be produced at wafer-scale in a standard laboratory; we have developed a series of methodologies based on metal-assisted chemical (wet) etching, electroplating, thermal bonding and laser-cutting to enable a cleanroom-free low-cost fabrication that does not require processing in an advanced semiconductor foundry. TriSilix is, therefore, resilient to disruptions in the global supply chain as the devices can be produced anywhere in the world. To create an ultra-low-cost device, the architecture proposed exploits the intrinsic properties of silicon and integrates three modes of operation in a single chip: i) electrical (Joule) heater, ii) temperature sensor (i.e. thermistor) with a negative temperature coefficient that can provide the precise temperature of the sample solution during reaction and iii) electrochemical sensor for detecting target NA. Using TriSilix, the sample solution can be maintained at a single, specific temperature (needed for isothermal amplification of NA such as Recombinase Polymerase Amplification (RPA) or cycled between different temperatures (with a precision of {+/-}1.3{degrees}C) for Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) while the exact concentration of amplicons is measured quantitatively and in real-time electrochemically. A single 4-inch Si wafer yields 37 TriSilix chips of 10x10x0.65 mm in size and can be produced in 7 hours, costing ~US $0.35 per device. The system is operated digitally, portable and low power - capable of running up to 35 tests with a 4000 mAh battery (a typical battery capacity of a modern smartphone). We were able to quantitatively detect a 563-bp fragment (Insertion Sequence IS900) of the genomic DNA of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis (extracted from cultured field samples) through PCR in real-time with a Limit-of-Detection of 20 fg, equivalent to a single bacterium, at the 30th cycle. Using TriSilix, we also detected the cDNA from SARS-CoV-2 (1 pg), through PCR, with high specificity against SARS-CoV (2003).

bioengineering↗