COIL-4 in Washington

ASG researchers from Professor Dermot Diamond's group are presenting at the 4th International Congress on Ionic Liquids (COIL-4) in Washington, DC from June 15-18, 2011 to explore the fascinating world of the science and application of ionic liquids. This meeting is the 4th in a series of successful meetings dating back to June 2005 when over 450 participants from 33 countries met in Salzburg, Austria to discuss and debate the lively topic of ionic liquids. Equally successful meetings have subsequently been held in Yokohama (COIL-2, 2007), and Cairns, Australia (COIL-3, 2009).

Ionic Liquids are not new materials - they have been known for over 100 years, but have gained a substantial growth in renewed interest over the last 20 years. Dr Kevin Fraser, Dr Fernando Benito- Lopez, Andrew Kavanagh, Simon Gallagher and Vincenzo Curto are the ASG researchers who are presenting. For more information on the conference go to the conference website- http://coil-4.org/.

ASG Student in Research Exchange

Bartosz Ziółkowski a Marie Curie PhD student working in Clarity has recently successfully applied for funding from the German Research Foundation for a research exchange visit at professor Andreas Taubert’s laboratory at the University of Potsdam. This new collaboration aims at developing new stimulus responsive materials to be used in new low power, smart, autonomous sensor platforms produced at Clarity labs. With initiatives like this we can improve out sensor technologies getting one step closer to the visionary wireless, autonomous smart sensing devices. But also develop a Europe wide network of expertise in interdisciplinary research. Such networking is increasingly important for creating and securing current FP7 and upcoming FP8 calls.

DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) is a self governing German Research Foundation that provides funding for research in all fields of science and humanities. Funding is available for individual researchers as well as for institutions and research infrastructure. One of DFG objectives is to support and intensify research exchange between German institutions and those based in other countries. Thanks to the initiative of dr Robert Byrne (Dublin City University) and professor Andreas Taubert (Potsdam University) Bartosz Ziółkowski can create a new link between Clarity and Potsdam University.

WANDA in OZ

Cormac Fay, a PhD student in ASG DCU, recently came back from a research visit to the University of Wollongong, Australia. While Cormac was there, he became involved in a number of projects in addition to maintaining many other projects in DCU remotely. Of noteworthy interest was the progression of the WANDA project (a robotic fish platform capable of patrolling a water body and reporting chemical composition levels wirelessly to a base station via an onboard
camera).Not only does this project reflect ASG's international collaboration regime, it is also applicable across a number of CLARITY's Research Streams (RS) and involves internal elements from the National Centre for Sensor Research (NCSR).

This, in conjunction with advanced polymers i.e. Poly Pyrrole (PPy) actuators (a tri-layer planar material that can bend about its own axis once an electrical stimulus is applied, and bend the opposite direction when the polarity is reversed) from the IPRI fulfils WANDA's movement capability resulting in a fish like movement. As a result of the extensive capabilities across
ASG, CLARITY, the NCSR and the IPRI, the project was capable of beingpushed forward from the work reported in its first publication i.e. the proof of concept phase. Specifically, the design and realisation of an unnaturally shaped and chromo
coloured sensor stations were accomplished through the use of the IPRI's fabrication facilities. These stations were then
equipped with advanced colorimetric chemical sensing polymer gels made in DCU within the NCSR.Following this, onboard electronics allowed for wireless, real-time control of the actuators (and therefore fish movement) via a complementary
control program executing on a nearby laptop.

Also encased within the fish body was a wireless colour camera that also communicated to the laptop Once the video stream was received, feedback signals were sent to the fish via the control program and thus resulted in autonomous movement through what advanced image recognition and object classification control algorithms. During a patrol, WANDA is able to classify pixels that represent a sensor station based on its unique shape and colour though the use of Support Vector Machines (SVMs).Furthermore, WANDA is able to interpret how far away a station is even with monocular vision. Once located, she extracts the colorimetric chemical indicator gels and is able to determine the local chemical state via its colour.

Recent Presentations

ASG members have had a busy couple of months presenting their research across the globe. Here are the details of some recent talks:

• ‘Remote Sensing and the Aging Population – Emerging Opportunities and Associated Pitfalls’, invited lecture, presented at ‘Advanced Technologies for an Ageing Population’ Institute of Nanotechnology, The IET Teacher Building, St. Enoch Square, Glasgow, 24 March 2011.
• Enhancing Quality of Life and Assisting Independent Living using Sensor Networks, invited oral presentation at the Collaborative Research Opportunities Workshop ‘Enabling Technologies for Active Ageing’, AIIM/IPRI, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, 14th February 2011.  This presentation was featured on the University TV channel regional TV (WIN 6-7 local news).
• Fernando Benito-Lopez, Robert Byrne, Shirley Coyle, Dermot Diamond, Ionogel Materials for Fluid Control and Sensing in Microfluidic Devices, Centro Nacional de Microelectronica (CNM), Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, 10th February 2011, Barcelona, Spain. (Invited Seminar).
•  ‘Stimuli-Responsive Materials – Their Role in the Realisation of Next Generation Autonomous Sensing Devices’, invited lecture presented at 2011 ACES Symposium on Electroactive Materials, Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, Innovation Campus, University of Wollongong, 9th February 2011.

MASK Group

The first meeting of the MASK group (Australia) took place in February 2011 to discuss the programme of exchanges that will occur under the new MASK FP7 Marie Curie/Australian Academy of Science agreement.

(L-R) Prof. Doug MacFarlane (Monash), Prof. David Officer (IPRI UOW), Prof. Gordon Wallace (IPRI, UOW), Dr. Jenny Pringle (Monash), Dr. Trevor Lewis (UTAS), Rochelle Warren (UOW Research Development Officer), Prof. Dermot Diamond (DCU), Dr. Pavel Nesterenko (UTAS)

CLARITY PI gives opening lecture at Micro-TAS

Professor Dermot Diamond, a DCU based CLARITY Principal Investigator gave the opening invited lecture at the international conference Micro-TAS 2010, in Groningen in the Netherlands.

His plenary lecture was titled 'FROM EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION IN WATER QUALITY MONITORING: ARE STIMULUS-RESPONSIVE MATERIALS THE KEY TO THE ANALYTICAL PLATFORMS OF THE FUTURE?'

The conference had 1000 registered delegates and was formally opened by the Crown Prince of the Netherlands, and was covered in the press and television.

The picture below, taken by Jan Taco te Gussinklo (jan.taco.te.gussinklo@home.nl) features Prof. Dermot Diamond, CLARITY, Prof. Jaap den Toonder, Philips Applied Technologies, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Prince of Orange, Prof. Elisabeth Verpoorte, University of Groningen,Prof. Albert van den Berg, Director, MESA+ Institute, University of Twente.

More information about the conference can be found here.

Lab-on-a-Chip European Congress, Dublin 2010

On 25 and 26 May 2010, the fourth Lab-on-a-Chip European Congress took place in Dublin, Ireland. Amongst the speakers were Prof. Dermot Diamond and Fernando Benito-Lopez. The attached article reviews some key presentations as well as the overall trends observed in the field of microfluidics as presented in this conference. To view article, please click here.

 

A survey of the microbiological water quality of costal and fresh waters in the Dublin area

Dr. Yuliya Shakalisava, Ms.Christina Doherty and Mr. Wojciech Hahnel carried out a microbiological survey of river, canal and costal waters in the Dublin area and uncovered some shocking results.

A full report on this research can be found here.

CLARITY researcher in the news

CLARITY researcher Dr Fernando Benito Lopez and colleague’s work on sweat sensors was featured in last week’s Sunday Times & New Scientist.

Scanned Times article can be found here. New Scientist article can be found here.

 

Ground-breaking research

Great work published in special issue on Ionic Liquids in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. Link below:

http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/CP/article.asp?doi=b920580b

 

Researcher wins DCU Fellowship

Dr. Aleksander Radu has received a DCU Fellowship for a project entitled "Potentiometric system for detection of drugs of abuse using quantum dot-modified aptamers". The project will be executed in

collaboration with Dr. Arben Merkoci from Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology, Barcelona, Spain.Shirley

 

Clarity feature in Nano magazine

Dr. Shirley Coyle and Prof. Dermot Diamond are featured in the magazine Nano . Their article is entitled "Nanosensors: Big benefit or big brother".

Short-term travel fellowship awarded to Dr. Robert Byrne

Dr. Robert Byrne a post-doctoral fellow in Prof. Dermot Diamond’s Adaptive Sensors Group, has been awarded a Short Term Travel Fellowship (STTF) from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). The STTF supplement is designed to enable team members in an SFI funded group to collaborate on research projects in laboratories outside the Republic of Ireland. This award in conjunction with Prof. David Officer, will allow Robert to travel to the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, University of Wollongong, Australia. Robert plans to spend two months working with Prof. Officer’s research team on the synthesis and characterization of photochromic polythiophenes. Photochromic switches are an intriguing class of organic molecules which allow the control of molecular structure and function with light. This offers the possibility of effecting dramatic changes to the bulk properties of a system by photonic irradiation. It is hoped that this research visit will help to strengthen research collaboration between the two groups.

 

Best Poster at The Fourth International Conference on Environmental Science
and Technology 2008

The poster is entitled - USING AUTONOMOUS SENSING DEVICES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING. The authors are Tanja Radu, John Cleary, Conor Slater and Dermot Diamond and it was awared the best poster at the Fourth International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology, 2008. The poster was presented by Tanja Radu.

CLARITY website

Mr. Micheál Martin, T.D, the Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment announced the establishment of CLARITY a new Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) on 15 April 2008. The website for the centre is http://www.clarity-centre.com/

IBM Visit

 

 

Graduation 2007

Martina O'Toole and Ciaran Smyth graduate.

 

The NCSR hosted an afternoon symposium in association with the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute (IPRI) of the University of Wollongong, Australia, on Monday 24th September. The symposium, ‘Polymers Down Under Makes Irish Sense’, looked at the application of intelligent polymer materials for sensor uses.

Gordon Wallace* , Emmet O'Reilly (NCSR), Robert Forster (NCSR), Sonia Ramirez (NCSR),

             Shannon Little (UOW), Sarah Brady (NCSR), Yanzhe Wu (UOW, NCSR), Dermot Diamond

* Prof. Gordon Wallace of the IPRI opened the proceedings with a talk entitled ‘Novel Architectures Providing New Platforms for Sensing Technologies’. This was followed by presentations by both NCSR and IRPI researchers on their work in this field.

Wearables make the headlines

The work of ASG researchers Shirley Coyle and Sarah Brady was featured in an article in the Irish Independent recently.

The full article is available on the Irish independent website at:

http://www.independent.ie/unsorted/features/power-dressing-1067010.html

 

ASG Researcher wins DCU Research Fellowship

Dr. Kim Lau, the projects manager of the ASG group has one of only two research fellowship awards given by the office of the vice-president of research. Dr. Lau is involved either directly or indirectly in virtually all the current research undertaken by the ASG.

 

August 2007: AIC presents three papers at the '29th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Lyon, France'

Polypyrrole Based Switchable Filter System

Wu, Yanzhe (Dublin CIty University), Nolan, Lorraine (Dublin City University), Coyle, Shirley (DCU), Lau, King Tong (Dublin City University), Wallace, Gordon (University of Wollongong), Diamond, Dermot (Dublin City University)


Abstract : A compact, electroactive switchable membrane would be useful as a valve. A method that employed inherently conducting polymers deposited onto a permeable substrate to form a switchable membrane was investigated. Platinised PVDF glued at the open bottom of plastic tube through which a liquid flux is maintained by gravity. The simultaneous polymerisation and flow rate monitoring were employed to optimise the polymer thickness. It was observed that the deposition of PPy gradually decreased to ~ 0.54 V then increased to 0.55 V. At the turning point, a drastic decrease in flow rate occurs. All of the PPy/PVDF filter membranes resulted in a higher flow rate at 0.60 V (opened) than -0.80 V (closed). The largest decrease of the flow rate was observed from ~ 0.52 mg/s at +0.60 V to 0.35 mg/s at -0.80 V. During deposition, the potential increase was believed to be due to the decrease of effective surface area of the membrane. At a constant cross-membrane pressure, the applied potential changes polymer bulky volume resulting in the change of average diameter of open pores across the filter membrane. Such a switchable filter system will have important implications in the development of advanced liquid handling devices.

Beads-Based System for Optical Sensing Using Spiropyran Photoswitches

Scarmagnani, Silvia (Dublin City University), Walsh, Zarah (Dublin City University), Alhashimy, Nameer (Dublin City University), Radu, Alexandar (Dublin City University), Macka, Mirek (Dublin City University), Paull, Brett (Dublin City University), Diamond, Dermot (Dublin City University)

Abstract: On the context of generating smart adaptive surfaces based on spiropyran photochromic moieties, it has been performed a covalent immobilization of a spiropyran derivative on the surface of polystirene microspheres. The polymeric beads functionalised with spiropyran can be switched using low power light sources, such as LEDs, between a pink, active form and a white, passive form. The colour change on the microbeads correspond to the reversible interconversion of the spiropyran between a coloured, planar merocyanine form, upon irradiation with UV-LEDs (370 nm), and a colorless spiro form by exposure to white or green (525 nm) LEDs. The photochromic behaviour of the coated beads has been characterised using different LEDs, reflectance measurement and as a reference, a sample of polystirene microspheres where the spiropyran derivatives has been simply physically absorbed. Future studies will be focused on the photoswitchable retention of coated microbeads, used as a stationary phase for separations of guest species, such as metals cations or amino acids.

Fabric-Based Fluid Handling Platform with Integrated Analytical Capability

Coyle, Shirley (DCU), Wu, Yanzhe (Dublin CIty University), Lau, King Tong (Dublin City University), Wallace, Gordon (University of Wollongong), Diamond, Dermot (Dublin City University)

Abstract: Bio-sensing textiles to perform on-body bio-chemical analysis are a novel concept in the field of wearable technologies. This work is part of BioTex, an EU funded project aiming to develop textile- based sensors for monitoring biological fluids. A fabric-based fluid handling system has been developed which has promising advantages including (1) potential for sophisticated control of functions like sample application, reagent addition, inclusion of reaction manifold, separation of sample components, variety of detection modes and addition of calibrants; (2) zero power requirement for the transport of liquid; (3) compact structure, easy to fabricate. A fabric fluidic channel is made from a moisture wicking fabric (polyamide lycra) in combination with a suberabsorbent(SAB) non-woven placed at the end of the channel. The SAB provides a passive pumping mechanism to control the flow of fluid through the channel and stores waste products. To control the delivery of the sample to the channel a lateral flow valve using a polypyrrole actuator has been implemented. The platform is configured to encompass i) a wicking channel, ii) lateral flow valves for the addition of sample, reagents and calibrant, iii)a detection unit iv) an absorbent pump. The detection of an analyte within the test sample is initiated by the opening of the sample valve (i.e. making a physical contact from one to another) and the sample wick passes the sample solution into the channel. A reagent valve, further along the channel, is then temporarily opened to add small amount of reagents into the channel to mix with the sample.

More information on the work presented at EMBC 2007 can be found here: Shirley Coyle, Silvia Scarmagnani.

ASG paper one of the most downloaded

A paper by an ASG researcher, Ben Schazmann, is one of the top 5 downloaded papers for the journal Supramolecular Chemistry. The paper is:

Benjamin Schazmann, Shane O’Malley, Kieran Nolan and Dermot Diamond. Development of a calix[4]arene sensor for soft metals based on nitrile functionality: relating structural tuning to an Ion Selective Electrode response. Supramolecular Chemistry, 2006, 18, 515-522.

More information on Ben Schazmann's popular work can be found here.

 

New Grant awards

EU Matera Grant with partners in Poland and Finland focused on electrochemical sensors for environmental monitoring - 2 PostDoc positions available.

Title:  Miniaturized all-solid-state sensors for trace analysis of substances relevant to health and welfare (MASTRA)

 

Science Foundation Ireland 'Research Frontiers' Programme - 2 Postgraduate studentships available

Title:  Light Activiated Molecular Switches for Control of Molecular Docking at Liquid-Solid Interfaces

Smart Packaging provides Seafood Quality and Safety Traceability

Events like the outbreak of Avian Influenza in Suffolk (UK, February 2007), which resulted in almost 160,000 turkeys being culled, highlight once again the critical importance of food safety and traceability. A team of researchers at DCU, led by Professor Dermot Diamond, has developed, in collaboration with the Marine Institute, Teagasc-Ashtown Food Research Centre and the Irish Fisheries Board-Bord Iascaigh Mhara (BIM), a “Smart Packaging: ColourSens” for fresh fish and fish products that tells the consumer if their pre-packed product is spoiled. To view a report on a recent trial - click here.

Group member wins Colin Barnes Award

Ben Schazmann wins the Colin Barnes Award for Post Graduate Excellence and is presented with his prize, Dec. 1st 2006.

To find out more about the research that won this prize click here.
 

Two ASG members graduate with PhD's at DCU autumn conferring

Martina, Ben, Sarah, Sonia celebrate after the ceremony  6th November, 2006.
 

Adaptive Sensors Group receives Australian Research Council Award

The Adaptive Sensors Group received an Australian Research Council Award to link with the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute at the University of Wollongong.

The Chief Investigator(s) are Prof GG Wallace and Prof D Diamond and the title of the research project is: Active polymer surfaces for control of fluid movement.

Summary: The realisation of a diverse array of remote or portable  chemical/biological monitoring systems depends on the development of low power fluid management protocols. The use of appropriate conducting polymer surfaces should enable this to occur. We envisage the integration of these fluid management platforms into portable, remote autonomous monitoring systems for environmental industrial and biomedical applications.

Award is for >$50K AUD 2007-2008.
 

Dermot Diamond, Ben Mattes and Gordon Wallace 'framed' in Dublin.
 

Wearables meets visual theatre

The adaptive information cluster (of which the ASG is a part) were involved in the recent Kilkenny Arts Festival. Research in Wearables was applied in a creative way in "Jacare Jungle".

A Flash of Brilliance

Prof. Dermot Diamond was featured in book and documentary entitled "A flash of brilliance". The documentary which featured work by Robert Byrne (Molecular sensors and the environment) and work by Shirley Coyle and Sarah Brady (Wearables) which Prof. Diamond supervised

Energy & Materials Workshop

A one-day workshop on energy and materials was held in DCU on June 30th. The plenary lecture was given by Nobel Laureate Alan McDiarmid. more information can be found at the workshop web site.

Awards

 

Outstanding Graduate Researcher 2006

The Faculty Research Committee awarded the Outstanding Graduate Researcher Award for 2006 to Sarah Brady recently. You can find out more about her award-winning research here.

 

Successful SFI-Tyndall NAP award

Left to right: Prof. Dermot Diamond (DCU), Mahbub Akhter (Tyndall), Dr. Rod Shepherd (DCU) & Pluen Maaskant(Tyndall) discussing GaN LEDs for sensor applications

 

ASG researcher wins best presentation at ICFIA 2005

ASG researcher Shannon Stitzel won the best general presentation by a young scientist at ICFIA 2005. At the conference she reported on an autonomous microfluidics system for field phosphate measurement; the building blocks from sampling through wireless communication were integrated into a single system.