21 March 2007 -- The University of Southampton has embarked on a project to develop chips which will monitor climate change and pollution levels in oceans.
“We will measure chemistry and biology in the ocean for climate change and pollution research,” said researcher Dr Matt Mowlem. “This involves testing and making bio-sensors by borrowing microelectronics techniques to make micro-fluidic and
micro-optical systems.”
The devices will be installed in a new generation of ARGO floats, battery-powered buoys which are dropped into the ocean and repeatedly dive to 2,000m; measuring temperature, pressure and salinity as they rise to the surface. Data is transmitted to satellites during periods on the surface. “There are 3,000 deployed at any one time,” said Mowlem. “They have already improved weather forecasting.”
The microfluidic devices will be etched in glass substrates and connected to various electronics and through optical fibres to LEDs for spectral analysis.
“We will flow sea water through them to measure and characterise plankton,” said Mowlem.
Already, research devices are determining what type of phytoplankton is being pumped through the lab-on-chips. “We can get the number and type, but not the species yet,” said Mowlem.
Phytoplankton have chlorophyll which re-emits light after being optically irradiated, and the characteristics of this contribute to the analysis. “It is possible to micro-fabricate the sensors on-chip,” said Mowlem. “But this is expensive and we want to make thousands so we use off-chip LEDs instead.”
Because the sensors will dramatically increase the amount of data collected by the floats “some low-grade analysis will be built into the system to reduce data for transmission”, said Mowlem.
The research is split between the School of Electronics and Computer Science and the National Oceanography Centre, also based at the University. The project is backed with a grant from the Engineering and Physical Research Council (EPSRC) and the Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC).
--Steve Bush--
