Chemical sensing chip sniffs out cocaine within minutes
By : Destiny Gwann
There is a creation being made that is very cost efficient that has been in the police wish list for a long time. The chip could be integrated into a handheld, portable device for detecting drugs in biological samples such as blood, breath, urine or spit. Qiaoqiang Gan, PhD, associate professor of electrical engineering in the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences made a chip and it sensed cocaine in a few minutes. It is so cheap you can make it from different materials that can cost around 10 cents. They are also hoping that in the future as the chip develops they can use it to detect marijuana as well. "The new chip is an engineered nanostructure that traps light at the edges of gold and silver nanoparticles. When biological or chemical molecules land on the chip's surface, some of the captured light interacts with the molecules and is "scattered" into light of new energies. This effect occurs in recognizable patterns that act as fingerprints, revealing information about what compounds are present. Because all chemicals -- cocaine, opioids, and active ingredients in marijuana -- have their unique light-scattering signatures, researchers can use the technology to quickly identify a wide range of chemicals." It also resembales an optical layered cake because the chip has like several
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