About the project
Colourimetric/fluorescent chemical sensors offer rapid and simple detection tools for chemical species including metal ions. This project examines the immobilization of supramolecular ion binders into hydrogels which provide a response to metal ions, forming a novel smartphone readable dipstick sensor for rapidly detecting the concentration of metals in seawater.
Metal ions are ubiquitous in seawater, however elevated concentrations of metals such as lead, mercury and copper are harmful to aquatic ecosystems. Current detection methods require expensive specialist equipment and skilled personnel, which is problematic both for their long-term sensing and sensing in low-resource settings, and for fully understanding and quantifying their environmental behaviour.
In this project, you will build on previous pioneering work by the project supervisors to design and synthesise novel classes of chemical sensors that can selectively bind to metal ions triggering a colour change and/or the activation of fluorescence. You will be trained to analyse the response and the limit of detection of these novel chemical sensors towards individual metal ions (including Cr, Cu, Zn, As, Cd, Hg and Pb) using various spectroscopic techniques. These will then be immobilized into polymeric hydrogels, fabricating a series of state-of-the-art sensing materials.
You will pattern these novel materials to fabricate devices capable of acting as gel or ‘gel-on-paper’ based dipstick sensors. This array can be arranged as a basic ‘QR code’ which can be scanned with a smartphone to give an instant quantitative read-out of water quality of metal ion concentration. The new devices will be tested against real world samples to determine the applicability of this technology to measuring metal ions in estuarine and coastal waters, and in low resource settings. Demonstrating the effectiveness of this strategy will open doors to these sensors being incorporated into a range of environmental monitoring applications, in seawater and beyond.
