Wearable Electrochemical Sensors for Rapid and on-Site Chemical Threat Assessment

Abstract

First responders, such as law enforcement officers or emergency medical personnel, are often faced with making critical decisions for scene management before knowing the root cause of the incident. Unfortunately, the threat of chemical and biological terror acts remains a growing global concern and when such events occur the timing of chemical and biological information is critical. Therefore, it is imperative that advances be made in bringing rapid chemical analysis directly into the field.Wearable electrochemical sensors are well placed to fill this technology gap to advance real-time chemical analytics at the point-of-need. The seamless integration of chemical sensors and biosensors within wearable platforms brings the power of laboratory-based chemical analyses directly to the wearer’s body [1]. While the majority of these wearable sensor systems have focused on healthcare and fitness applications, there are growing demands for developing wearable sensor platforms for rapid and on-site chemical threat assessment for a diverse range of forensic, security and defence applications.To this effect, this presentation will detail recent progress in glove-based wearable electrochemical sensors, where electrochemical sensing modalities are coupled to dexterous and tactile sampling strategies to provide critical chemical information where needed the most [2]. In particular, there will be a focus on the integration of enzymatic biosensors for the detection of organophosphorus chemical threats [3], through to the development of an electrochemical assay for the synthetic opioid fentanyl [4] and subsequent translation to a glove-based wearable platform [5]. Challenges and future prospects for glove-based wearable electrochemical sensors will be discussed in relation to on-site chemical threat assessment applications.