Micro- and Nano-instrument Power
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Micro- and Nano-Instrument Power Vassili Karanassios Chemistry, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1, Canada
ABSTRACT For the last several years, we have been developing and characterizing “mobile” microand nano-instruments for use on-site (e.g., in the field). Although such portable, battery-operated instruments are much smaller that their laboratory-scale counterparts, sometimes they provide comparable performance and they often offer improved capabilities. As such, they are expected to cause a paradigm shift in classical chemical analysis by allowing practioners to “bring the lab (or part of it) to the sample”. Two classes of examples will be used as the means with which to illustrate the power of micro- and nano-instruments. One class involves a “patient” as the sample and an ingestible capsule-size spectrometer used for cancer diagnosis of the gastro intestinal tack as (part of) “the lab”. The other involves the “environment” as the sample and a portable, battery-operated, miniaturized instrument that utilizes a PalmPilot™ with a wireless interface for data acquisition and signal processing as (part of) “the lab”. To discuss how to electrically power such miniaturized instruments, mobile energy issues will be addressed. Particular emphasis will be paid to current or anticipated future applications and to the paradigm shifts that may prove essential in powering the next generation of miniaturized instruments. INTRODUCTION In classical chemical analysis, samples are collected in the field and are brought to a lab for chemical analysis by bench-top size instrumentation. Due to their size and weight, such instruments are typically anchored to a lab. And, due to their electrical power requirements they are tethered to a wall socket. But in many cases it will be ideal if an instrument (i.e., part of the lab) was brought to the sample. Applications abound in environmental monitoring and in clinical analysis. Miniaturized versions of large-size instruments that are smaller, cheaper, smarted and faster (at producing results) will cause a paradigm shift in classical chemical analysis by enabling practitioners to bring (part of) the lab to the sample. Despite of the intellectual appeal of employing miniaturized instrumentation, taking the lab (or part of it) to the sample creates a number of challenging scientific and technological questions. Among them, would such instrumentation follow scaling laws? Would they have the power (i.e., performance characteristics) to effectively complete their large-size counterparts? A related question that inevitably arises is: where would such instruments get their electrical power? In this paper, these questions will be addressed in some detail and “mobile energy” successes and issues will be outlined.
TAKING THE LAB TO THE SAMPLE, PART I In the first example that will be used to illustrate the power of miniaturized instruments, “the lab” is an ingestible, pill-size fluorescence-based system for cancer diagnosis of the Gastro In
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