Foresight Fellowship in Manufacturing: Defining and Fabricating New Passive Bio-Sensing Wireless Tag Technologies

The fellowship will use 3 selected international leading researchers to help develop passive Biosensors as candidates for widespread fabrication by additive manufacturing techniques. These sensors will be read wirelessly, they will be microscale and directly integrated into surfaces of medical implants, packaging or transfer tattoos. The sensors could be produced in great numbers, or they may be very specific meaning only a few are needed. Therefore, producing them locally by inkjet style additive manufacture is highly desirable. When these communicating sensors can be made very thin, very cheap and reliable, they can be widely applied and will form an enabling technology of the Internet of Things. The international researchers are Profs John Rogers in Illinois, Leena Ukkonen in Tampere and Prof Gaetano Marrocco in Rome. The manufacturing research is underpinned by Prof S Yeates at the Manchester Centre for Digital Fabrication.

If a wireless sensor is to be very low profile and cheap, it cannot have a battery meaning it must be passive. Some strain, dampness, chemical vapour and pressure sensors are being developed based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. These sensors offer potential to enable the Internet of Things, but they do not have the very high sensitivity or selectivity required to detect a biological agent such as the microbial products that cause infection. Additionally, the sensors and their antennas are directly integrated with functional materials that currently makes their manufacturing a complex issue and they are often large in size compared to integrated technologies.

Producing passive wireless biosensors is a major challenge and cross several discipline boundaries: Bioscience, materials science, electronic engineering, chemistry, ink formulation and additive manufacture. Creating a transducer that converts a small probe response to a large enough electrical change to modulate the transmission of the RFID link is key. This pivots on effecting a significant change in permittivity associated with an antenna substrate or its feed matching system when a particular 'sensed' parameter occurs. Obtaining a sufficiently large change in capacitance or conductivity requires expertise in functional materials science and antenna engineering. The proposed sensors will require manufacturing processes to realize structures that are not currently producible, or that require high-end tooling and clean room processes which compounds the barriers to manufacturing passive wireless biosensors. Although there are many potential applications of microsystem wireless sensors integrated into surfaces, the specific applications considered in this fellowship are firstly to detect biofilms on silicone valves in voice prostheses and secondly, to develop efficient epidermal sensing tags for skin based health monitoring.

The identified key challenges of the work are:
1. Obtaining sensitivity to small concentrations, and selectivity of, bio-agents
2. Achieving efficient transducing between bio-sensing probe and passive wireless terminal
3. Incorporation of active bio-active functional materials onto surfaces
4. Fabrication of activated sensing microsystems

These challenges will be met through 3 activities:
(a) Additive manufacture of Micro-Surface Patterning and 3D Micro-system bio-sensing cantilevers with Prof Leena Ukkonen in Tampere, Finland.
(b) Creating Auto-Tuning Epidermal Tags on Bio-Compatible Materials with Prof Gaetano Marrocco in Rome, Italy.
(c) Identifying optimal technology combinations for integration into epidermal systems and road mapping future manufacturing techniques with Prof John Rogers in Illinois, US.

The bioscience and materials science expertise is provided at Kent by Drs C. Gourlay and S. Holder respectively.

I will provide showcase demonstrators of accessible biosensers on surfaces including the skin. I am in a strong position to showcase my outputs being the only academic partner of the Government's Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI). The project is led by CPI and other members include Near field Solutions, Invotec (PEL), PragmatIC, Hasbro, Mercian Labels, Innovia, Optek, Silvaco, BPIF, TIMS and Crown Packaging Ltd. Showcasing to these partners will identify important and relevant future market directions.

The key short term impact arises from the 3 core activities, each resulting in a showcase demonstrator or recommendation roadmap. Activity 1 demonstrates microsystem sensors created by direct additive manufacture and impacts on biohazard and bio-health professionals. The use of RFID as the RF transponder technology brings forward the possible impact time. The ability to manufacture these devices locally and responsively will drive interest as medical devices are niche and may have a fixed shelf life. Activity 2 demonstrates auto-tuning tags for mounting on skin and other challenging surfaces. This concept is of interest to the industrialists who contact me about epidermal tags for authentication, payment, ticketing, health sensing and assistive technologies, yet where application is limited by constrained read ranges owing to detuning. Activity 3 has an overview road mapping objective informed by end users. It is anticipated that this will be made widely available in the form of professional publications and by EPSRC at the end of the fellowship. As part of our regular performance monitoring with my industrial partners from AMSCI, I will seek advice on possible impact opportunities at all meetings.

Links to all our showcased demonstrators will be made available on the project and successor websites and through my Manchester academic partners at the EPSRC Large Area Electronics Centre (comprising Cambridge, Imperial, Manchester, Swansea), our joint work will feed into the International Electrotechnical Committee 119 through the UK Plastics Electronics Leadership Group.

For wider interest in manufacturing and to encourage future skilled workers to enter the field, I will devise an activity for the 2018 national Big Bang Science Fair. I will seek to provide an event that requires school children and the public to problem solve as well as appreciate the latest outputs from UK research & industry. This is a high impact national show over 4 days.

My strategy for community building is contribution to, (and organising a session at), the EPSRC Manufacturing the Future Conference for academics and industry working in additive manufacturing. My international research partners including Prof John Rogers will visit the UK and deliver keynotes on our developing Future of Manufacturing Roadmap.

My TSB project 'authenticated Self' (led by SME Evidentia Ltd), makes my research facilities available to an industrially focused project and transfers my epidermal RFID sensing expertise out to industrial developers at Evidentia though IP agreement with my university's enterprise office.

Following previous EPSRC funding, I was able to trial several concept designs after approaches from industry and expect to continue in this manner with this scholarship. Invotec (PEL) and CPI which are part of the AMSCI consortium both run prototyping and short run concept demonstration services which I will be able to access and this can facilitate transfer to interested industrialists.
My EPSRC funded RFID characterisation equipment can be shared, bringing together researchers and industrialists interested in passive sensing and RFID. These facilities are publicised by my School's industrial liaison officer who approaches and coordinates prospective users and collaborators.

Finally, we will also publish in high profile journals and participate in professional institution events.