These novel platforms are biodegradable, simple, low cost and easy to produce and by mass production, they will present outstanding properties that make them ideal for several applications including medical and clinical diagnostics, measurement, and detection of pathogens.
Cellulose is simple, naturally abundant and low cost. However, cellulose fibres ranging at the nanoscale exhibit extraordinary properties such as flexibility, high crystallinity, biodegradability and optical transparency, among others. The nanomaterial can be extracted from plant cellulose pulp or synthetized by non-pathogenic bacteria. Currently, nanocellulose is under active research to develop a myriad of applications including filtration, wound dressing, pollution removal approaches or flexible and transparent electronics.
According to the project’s leading researcher Hamed Golmohammadi, “the objective of the team was to introduce bacterial cellulose nanopapers as a basis to design, fabricate, and test simple, disposable, and versatile sensing platforms.”
“Majority of Transparent substrates used in manufacturing optical sensors are expensive, toxic and non-biodegradable, whereas synthetic bacterial nanopapers are inexpensive, biodegradable and flexible with proper optical and mechanical properties; These features lead to a significant decrease in production costs of sensors and measurements of samples,” he asserted.
This researcher further asserted that, “besides being inexpensive and flexible, they are also environmentally friendly and have potential applications for producing the new generation of chemical and biological nonosensors replacing conventional spectrophotometer and fluorescence measurement equipment.”
Golmohammadi concluded that, “nanopaper-based optical sensing platforms can be used to produce clinical, medical, and pathological diagnostic kits used to determine the types of pathogens.”
According to the researchers, this class of platforms will prove valuable for displaying analytical information in diverse fields such as diagnostics, environmental monitoring and food safety.
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