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Jeffrey G Bell Electrochemical Research Group

Electrochemical Sensors

The detection of chemical/biological species is an ever growing area of interest because of its direct impact on many scientific fields/industries such as environmental chemistry (i.e., ions, toxins, etc.), health care (i.e., biomarkers and metabolites), defense (i.e., chemical/biological weapons), pharmaceutical (i.e., chirality) and others. The development of sensors capable of detecting these diverse and chemically very different species is of the utmost importance. While great success has been found in certain areas, the detection of classes of these species remains challenging. For example, many drugs and amino acids are chiral, and the individual enantiomers can possess drastically different properties (i.e., activity, toxicity, etc.). The two main problems facing chiral detection are (i) high selectivity (mixtures are often racemic) and (ii) simultaneous detection of multiple enantiomers (small energy differences). Currently, expensive, time-consuming methods for chiral detection are used (i.e., HPLC, Circular dichroism, Polarimetry). Beyond chirality, many biomarkers are either redox-active or inactive molecules and thus require either expensive equipment or multiple analytical techniques for their quantification. Electrochemical techniques including: potentiometry (shown above), voltammetry, amperometry and impedance spectroscopy will be utilized while designing effective diagnostic tools.