Research Projects

Diabetes patients often collect blood samples through needle pricking and drop casting on strips for regular check-ups. Recent studies suggest that noninvasive, low-cost wearable blood glucose detection devices with live monitoring could become the norm. Current investigation focuses on glucose oxidation from enzymes glucose oxidase or non-enzymatic glucose sensors based on metal oxides. However, the sensitivity of these detection pathways depends on minimally invasive sources like sweat or tears, where glucose concentration varies from 0.2 mM to 0.6 mM compared to 100 times higher concentrations in blood. Google has developed a smart Google contact lens that can sense glucose levels in tears. Enzymatic glucose sensors have limited lifetime due to decreasing enzyme activity. However, conjugated polymers (CPs) as synthetic biorecognition units may provide better template with consistent accuracy and selectivity with time. They exhibit specific sites for target molecule binding and have a mixed conduction property that enables them to transduce ionic fluxes into electronic signals, detecting weak biological signals. Developing a flexible device for point of care quantification of glucose from sweat is widely supported by clinicians during initial market research. This proposal aims to develop a wearable device to quantify glucose in human perspiration, helping endocrinologists screen diabetes complications by analyzing temporal variation of glucose levels. The device will be designed and fabricated using polymer-based micro-detectors mounted on plastic substrates linked with a datalogger, which will record and transmit glucose level readings to the cloud continuously.