- The new cocaine-sensing chip can allow on-the-spot testing for the drug using blood, breath, urine or saliva.
- The existing technique for drug-testing, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, is costly but the raw materials for the chip cost less that $0.10.
- Researchers will eventually use a similar device to detect other opioids and even marijuana.
Researchers at the University of Buffalo, New York have produced a new, low-cost chemical sensing chip which can detect cocaine.
The chip can currently detect substances within samples of blood, breath, urine or saliva in a purification process, and was able to detect cocaine within minutes of the experiment.
The researchers said that the next step in their research is to install the chip in a simple, portable testing device, which would allow for "on-the-spot" drug tests for a wide range of substances.
The existing technique for drug-testing, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, also uses chips but they're costly; the raw materials for the new chip cost less that $0.10.
The new chip, which the university described as a "layer cake", is an engineered nanostructure made by layering material between gold and silver nanoparticles to trap light. When biological or chemical particles land on the chip's surface, some of the captured light interacts with the molecules and is "scattered" into new light patterns. This effect occurs in unique patterns that act as fingerprints, revealing information about what compounds are present.
The technology is cost-effective, suitable for industrial-scale production and has a long shelf life, with researchers finding that it performed well after a year in storage.
The chip could speed up drug testing procedures in countries all over the world and also has obvious benefits for police and road safety authorities, who will be able to conduct more "on-the-spot" tests for a wider variety of drugs.
Researchers hope the chip will eventually be able to detect other drugs such as cannabis.
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