University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a cradle and app for the iPhone that uses the device’s built-in camera and processing power as a biosensor to detect toxins, proteins, bacteria, viruses and other molecules.
Having such sensitive biosensing capabilities in the field could enable on-the-spot tracking of groundwater contamination, combine the phone’s GPS data with biosensing data to map the spread of pathogens, or provide immediate and inexpensive medical diagnostic tests in field clinics or contaminant checks in the food processing and distribution chain.
The wedge-shaped cradle contains a series of optical components – lenses and filters – found in much larger and more expensive laboratory devices. The cradle holds the phone’s camera in alignment with the optical components. At the heart of the biosensor is a photonic crystal. When anything biological attaches to the photonic crystal – such as protein, cells, pathogens or DNA – the reflected color will shift from a shorter wavelength to a longer wavelength.
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