Novel Sensor Design And Application For Detection Of Dangerous Contaminated Marine Biotoxins

Planner electromagnetic sensing system has been used as one of the NDTmethods to evaluate the material properties i.e., to evaluate near-surfaceproperties such as conductivity, permeability and dielectric properties. Theapplications of planar electromagnetic sensors will depend on both thecharacteristic of the sensor type chosen and also the characteristic of materialunder test. Conventional planar interdigital sensors and novel planar interdigitalsensors have been designed, fabricated and tested for detection of dangerousmarine biotoxins in seafood.We have developed a novel planar interdigital sensing system using amicrocontroller and local fabricated circuits with dual supply and signalprocessing for data acquisition. The first prototype is called seafood inspectiontool or SIT consist of a SiLab C8051F020microcontroller, a signal processingcircuit, novel planar interdigital sensor, an expansion board and dual powersupply circuit. A user friendly software was also developed to make SIT easy tobe used by users who has a little technical knowledge. SIT was developed to betested by the fisherman who can do a pre-screening process of the mussels attheir ranch site.Our main objective is to sense the presence of dangerous contaminated acidin mussels and other seafoods. Initial studies were conducted with three peptidederivatives namely Sarcosine, Proline and Hydroxylproline. These threechemicals are structurally closely related to our target molecule （domoic acid）.The initial results have shown that all sensors respond very well to the chemicalsand it is possible to discriminate the different chemicals from the output of thesensor. Novel interdigital sensors have shown better sensitivity measurementcompared to conventional interdigital sensors. The novel interdigital sensors were then being tested with three seafood products. Results from the analysishave shown that novel interdigital sensor with configuration#l （sensor_l） hasbetter sensitivity compared to other sensors. Sensor₁has been chosen forexperiment using proline and mussels. The changes in sensor sensitivity wereanalysed with mussels before and after adding the proline. The presence ofproline on the mussel surface and also injected proline to the mussel sampleswere clearly detected by sensor₁. Therefore, sensor₁can be used for theexperiment with domoic acid which is actually more expensive compared tothose three chemicals used for the initial studies.