Liuz Pereira
University of Aveiro, Portugal
Title: Odor biosensors based on organic semiconductors towards low-cost health care diagnosis in gynecological diseases
Biography
Biography: Liuz Pereira
Abstract
In the past decades, we have seen a big development in sensor technology, which changed completely the way we interact with electronic devices and consequently our lifestyles. A promising application of sensors is in the area of medicine. Some biosensor can be able to detect and distinguish analytes for specific diseases. One of these types of devices are electronic noses. New e-noses were designed and developed in order to fulfill medical devices standards. Conductive polymer properties make them a good choice for cost effective and transportable e-noses. Although there are already a couple of commercial e-noses based on conductive polymers, they still have a big cost associated, and there is still a big research to improve their performance, considering the exigencies for medical devices. In this work, e-nose biosensors based on nanostructured PEDOT:PSS thin films as sensing material, in a carbon interdigitated electrodes configuration, was made and characterized. The focus was the detection of the two most important gynecological diseases, the Candidiasis and Lactobacillus. The sensors were made in low cost/high output systems, namely screen-printing and Roll-to-Roll process. The results, obtained by resistive and capacitive responses, allows, in a simple way, distinguish the normal and infected analytes for both diseases. Different sensor geometries was studied. The obtained data that can be easily processed, associated with the production technologies, opens a new framework in the wide spreading of health care/home care diagnosis.