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Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences

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Soft Miniature Sensors and Nanoengineered Coatings

The vision in this platform is to underpin a transformation in surgical and interventional field by exploiting innovations in miniature, multiplexed, multimodal sensing and nano engineering.

Soft miniature sensors are our first area of emphasis. Flexible/wearable sensors have undergone impressive growth recently. A similar transformation in surgical and interventional practice faces a few key challenges: need for rapid sensor prototyping (e.g. using high-resolution 3D printing), materials biocompatibility and/or biodegradability, integration with surgical tools and implantable devices, realisation of multimodal and wireless sensing, etc. The current platform will address these challenges and, in close engagement with the WEISS clinicians, focus on the following research drivers to:

  • Measure physiological parameters such as pressure, pH, temperature, oxygen concentration
  • Integrate sensors on interventional devices
  • Show sensor biodegradability.

In a related emphasis and to facilitate integration of sensors on surgical devices, we will also investigate nanoengineered coatings for tuning the adhesion. This line of work will exploit our extensive expertise in manufacture of superhydrophobic and superoleophobic coatings, which will be extended to deliver robust antimicrobial and low adhesion coatings for surgical and interventional devices.

A wide ranging materials, (nano)manufacturing, imaging and micro-robotics expertise underpins this platform, along with close stewardship from the world leading clinical expertise in Cardiovascular, Fetal, Obstetric, Paediatric and Ophthalmic surgery. This platform integrates a number of substantial and active research projects funded from external sources. These include exploitation of nanomanufacturing and materials expertise from ERC Starting Grant NICEDROPS, miniature imaging and sensing expertise from GIFT-SURG the project, nanomechanics and rheology expertise built with EPSRC Future Formulations project CORAL, etc.

Miniature sensors

Figure: Technologies underpinning the platform. A) Transparent nanoengineered superhydrophobic coatings with exceptional liquid resistance. The beaded-up water drop on the coated glass slide magnifies the letters underneath due to lensing effect. B) Example of nanoengineered, superhydrophobic and antibacterial coating showing lack of Staphylococcus epidermidis adhesion. C) High-resolution 3D printing technique employed to manufacture polymeric structures for biosensors. D) Exemplar exploitations of high-resolution 3D printing to manufacture sensor arrays in micro-robotics, high-resolution miniature ultrasonic and photoacoustic imaging probes, and flexible electronic devices.

Exemplar publications

F. Fang, S. Aabith, S. Homer-Vanniasinkam, M. K. Tiwari. High-resolution 3D printing for healthcare underpinned by small-scale fluidics, In: 3D Printing in Medicine, Woodhead Publishing (2017).

Bergeles, C. and G.-Z. Yang. From passive tool holders to microsurgeons: safer, smaller, smarter surgical robots. IEEE Trans. Biomedical Engineering, 61(5), 1565-1576 (2014)

Ben-Jaber, S., Peveler, W.J., Quesada-Cabrera, R., Cortés, E., Sotelo-Vazquez, C., Abdul-Karim, N., Maier, S.A. and Parkin, I.P., 2016. Photo-induced enhanced Raman spectroscopy for universal ultra-trace detection of explosives, pollutants and biomolecules. Nature communications, 7 (2016).

C. Peng, Z. Chen, M. K. Tiwari. Robust superhydrophobic material and coating. UK provisional patent, filed (2017).

Platform lead:
Prof Manish K Tiwari