Portable, Rapid Biological Agent Detector

70873 As recent incidents indicate, the threat of biological warfare is real. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction poses a grave danger to our society and the world population. To reduce the risks of these potential hazards, there is an immediate need for the development of sensors and instruments to detect the presence of biological warfare agents, which could be deliberately dispersed into the environment. In addition, to be a useful tool for law enforcement, these devices must be simple, portable, user-friendly, and accurate. This project will develop a simple, portable, battery-operable, biosensor for the detection of multiple biological warfare agents. The biosensor will utilize an ellipsometric concept to create a labelless, imaging optical sensor. The design will capitalize on advances in microarray technology, and will employ a microarray as a disposable sensor chip. During Phase I, the optical imaging reader will be constructed and biosensors will be fabricated. The performance of the device will be tested with a biological warfare simulant. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The biological agent detector should find use as a preliminary screening tool to monitor for biological warfare agents. Potential users include civilian and military personnel and various law enforcement personnel.