The present study is aimed to develop on chip sensor with a problem-oriented style for rapid detection and diagnosis in the applications of food, environment and medicine. To explore various basic problems and engineering challenges encountered in hard reality, four types of sensors are investigated, from basic physical sensing and measurement to complex extensions into chemical and biological detection: (1) High spatial resolution temperature mapping in microfluidics. Two temperature sensors have been tried, they are fluorescence of Rhodamine B and up conversion photoluminance of NaYF4:Yb3+, Er3+ nano-particle. Leveled by our direct 2-D ratiometric imaging method IR excitable up conversion luminance nano particles showed its special advantage in high stability, self-reference...[ Read more ]

The present study is aimed to develop on chip sensor with a problem-oriented style for rapid detection and diagnosis in the applications of food, environment and medicine. To explore various basic problems and engineering challenges encountered in hard reality, four types of sensors are investigated, from basic physical sensing and measurement to complex extensions into chemical and biological detection: (1) High spatial resolution temperature mapping in microfluidics. Two temperature sensors have been tried, they are fluorescence of Rhodamine B and up conversion photoluminance of NaYF4:Yb3+, Er3+ nano-particle. Leveled by our direct 2-D ratiometric imaging method IR excitable up conversion luminance nano particles showed its special advantage in high stability, self-reference property etc.; (2) “Gutter oil” sensor, to target this only happened in reality problem also two solutions have been tried, one is high refractive index detection based on plasmonic resonance couple grating chip and another one a test strip paper based on polar material sensitive fluorescence dye. Though simple form the test strip looks, test results showed it is the most effective method; (3) Cancer cell specific sensor, using folic acid functionalized polymer coated surface as transducer, cancer cells (which are usually high folate receptor expressed) can be specifically captured; (4) The last sensor is DNA detection sensor based on quantitative fluorescence PCR. Here a real-time multiplex method was added to the existing quantitative process, and sample of human raw saliva without any pretreatment was successfully ran on this chip.