Cell phones to detect harmful chemicals
By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 15:12 IST   |    2 Comments
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Cell phones to detect harmful chemicals
Washington: Cell phones will now come with a new feature, which would detect dangerous airborne chemicals and alert emergency responders through a cell phone network. This could be done through atiny silicon chip that works more like a nose. "This technology could map a chemical accident as it unfolds," said Michael Sailor, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego who heads the research effort.Cellphones are available everywhere and Sailor backed up his statement with this. The first phase of development of the sensor has been successfully finished by Rhevision, a small startup company located in San Diego, Sailor's research group at UCSD. The sensor, a porous flake of silicon- changes colour when it interacts with specific chemicals.the researchers can tune individual spots on the silicon flake to respond to specific chemical traits by manipulating the shape of the pores. A set of sensory cells can detect specific chemical properties. It's the pattern of activation across the array of sensors that the brain recognizes as a particular smell. In the same way, the pattern of color changes across the surface of the chip and it will reveal the identity of the chemical. Their chips can detect methyl salicylate, a compound used to simulate the chemical warfare agent mustard gas, and toluene, a common additive in gasoline. "The beauty of this technology is that the number of sensors contained in one of our arrays is determined by the pixel resolution of the cell phone camera. With the megapixel resolution found in cell phone cameras today, we can easily probe a million different spots on our silicon sensor simultaneously. So we don't need to wire up a million individual sensors," Sailor said. "We only need one. This greatly simplifies the manufacturing process because it allows us to piggyback on all the technology development that has gone into making cell phone cameras lighter, smaller, and cheaper." Fire-fighters could use this technology to detect carbon monoxide during fires and the mine workers can detect impending explosion in mines.

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