Thursday, 24 November 2016
A graphene oxide sensor with ICN2 technology is commercialised by Biolin Scientific
Biolin Scientific, an instrumentation company, offers to its customers a graphene oxide Q-sensor developed in collaboration with the ICN2 Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors Group headed by ICREA Professor Arben Merkoçi. This collaboration allows the commercialisation of a product co-developed at ICN2.
A graphene oxide (GO) sensor co-developed by the ICN2 Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors Group, led by Prof. Arben Merkoçi and his PhD student Luis Pires, is offered since middle September by Biolin Scientific, a prestigious instrumentation company devoted to the production of analytical devices. The product includes the application of ICN2 patented graphene patterning technology in the field of quartz-based microbalance sensing for on-line measurement and monitoring of thin films thickness growing.
The achievement
Biolin Scientific, a leading Nordic instrumentation company, develops products based on nanotechnology and advanced measurement techniques. The company has a line of instrumentation called Q-Sense, which deals with instruments that enable real-time analysis of surface-molecule interactions with nanogram precision for a wide variety of samples and measurement conditions. Biolin Scientific wanted to incorporate a graphene coated sensor in its Q-Sense sensors list. The collaboration between ICN2 and the Nordic company became plausible because the Institute already had expertise transferring graphene to the surface of interest. Applications range from diagnostics, safety & security to environmental monitoring.
Scientific basis
The ICN2 Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors Group, headed by ICREA Professor Arben Merkoçi, in collaboration with Biolin Scientific use a quartz crystal microbalance containing patterned graphene, a system that measures mass variation. The device measures frequency changes of a quartz crystal piezoelectric resonator when it is disturbed by the addition of a small mass (DNA, protein, virus, bacteria, etc.) or any other tiny object to be quantified.
The technology of graphene patterning, already patented by ICN2, takes advantages of wax-printing onto nitrocellulose membranes followed by filtering of exfoliated graphene and a pressing process onto any solid surface.
A product with ICN2 technology
The collaboration between ICN2 Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors Group and Biolin Scientific is a success case coordinated in collaboration with ICN2 Knowledge and Technology Transfer Department, headed by Jordi Reverter. Q-Sense graphene oxide sensor is one of the first products based on an ICN2 technology that is able to reach the market very fast. There are, for sure, more to come thanks to the ICN2 Groups and Departments committed with facilitating the exploitation of research results by transferring knowledge and technology developed in-house to industry worldwide.
Application reference:
Article reference:
Luis Baptista-Pires, Carmen C. Mayorga-Martínez, Mariana Medina-Sánchez, Helena Montón, and Arben Merkoçi. Water Activated Graphene Oxide Transfer Using Wax Printed Membranes for Fast Patterning of a Touch Sensitive Device. ACS Nano, 2016, 10(1), Pages 853-860.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.5b05963