SCI-TECH: From a Riverside lab, an electronic nose
RIVERSIDE ---- Within the next few years, technology developed by a Riverside professor that mimics the human sense of smell could be pinned to Homeland Security uniforms in New York, or monitoring pesticide levels in Central California ---- or in any number of other scenarios requiring an "electronic nose."
Working at UC Riverside for nearly a decade, Nosang Myung pioneered a way to build microscopic structures that could become the most useful tools in detecting chemical attacks and dangerous levels of toxic substances such as ammonia and sulfur dioxide.
Myung is a professor of chemical and environmental engineering, and it is his work in developing so-called "nanosensors" that has enabled a Riverside company, Nano Engineered Applications Inc., to build a prototype.
"The current version is a portable sensor, something people can hold. Right now, we're putting different sensors in it," Myung told the North County Times recently. "Every nose has receptors ---- for example, when we smell coffee, your nose responds to the smell of coffee and you memorize it."
The UC Riverside project was initially funded in 2005 by a $2.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, which wanted a wearable sensor array, something that public servants could pin on like a nametag.
That required Myung and his team to engineer a material that would be sensitive ---- like the receptors in a real human nose ---- to stimuli in the air.
Nano.gov describes nanotechnology as "the understanding and control of matter at the nanoscale, at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications."
A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, and a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick. The tiny structures Myung is an expert at manipulating, known as "nanotubes," are about 1.4 nanometers in diameter and a few microns long.
"Think about making a necklace ---- the carbon nanotube is the string, and then we put on beads made of metal nanoparticles ---- depending on what kind of beads and the string's size, it looks different, right? The same goes when you make a nanosensor ---- depending on what shape you put it in, it senses analyte (chemicals to be analyzed) differently."
When a sensor is triggered, it produces an electrical signal, which can be converted into data.
Myung's research is in the early stages of practical development, but it already holds promise to revolutionize the way industrial companies and antiterrorism authorities protect against harmful airborne substances.
The Environmental Protection Agency, for example, collects air quality samples to be analyzed in a lab ---- instead, this technology would provide instant feedback with little to no scientific knowledge required by its operators.
"Right now, we're developing a device that can interface with a smartphone, so you can do real-time monitoring," Myung explained.
The professor serves as a senior scientific adviser to Nano Engineered Applications, which is licensing the intellectual property rights from the University of California.
"We just finished a full prototype," he said. "That's the dream of the researcher, right? Most of the time, researchers are up writing papers. It's great to see."