Direct-Dispense Polymeric Waveguides Platform for Optical Chemical Sensors

We describe an automated robotic technique called direct-dispense to fabricate a polymeric platform that supports optical sensor arrays. Direct-dispense, which is a type of the emerging direct-write microfabrication techniques, uses fugitive organic inks in combination with cross-linkable polymers to create microfluidic channels and other microstructures. Specifically, we describe an application of direct-dispensing to develop optical biochemical sensors by fabricating planar ridge waveguides that support sol-gel-derived xerogel-based thin films. The xerogel-based sensor materials act as host media to house luminophore biochemical recognition elements. As a prototype implementation, we demonstrate gaseous oxygen (O(2)) responsive optical sensors that operate on the basis of monitoring luminescence intensity signals. The optical sensor employs a Light Emitting Diode (LED) excitation source and a standard silicon photodiode as the detector. The sensor operates over the full scale (0%-100%) of O(2) concentrations with a response time of less than 1 second. This work has implications for the development of miniaturized multi-sensor platforms that can be cost-effectively and reliably mass-produced.