Welcome to this week's newsletter from Zimmer and Peacock. This newsletter is a mixture of news, stories and tech notes from Zimmer and Peacock. If you want to subscribe to our newsletter or have any questions regarding Zimmer and Peacock and our passion for biosensor technologies please don't hesitate to contact us.
An alternative to traditional glass electrodes
Traditional glass pH electrodes have been around for decades, but there has been a question is it possible to get away from traditional glass electrodes and replace them with a technology that could provide the performance of a glass electrode but with the low cost fabrication of techniques such as screen-printing.
At Zimmer and Peacock we are striving to get pH sensors to 5 cents or less, and we are on the way to achieving this.
A recent analysis of pH sensors from a ZP manufactured pH sensor batch showed we are bringing mass produced low cost screen printed pH sensors to the market.
Modern Organic Electrochemistry/Analytical Electrochemistry
Electrochemistry has a lot to offer the chemist, it can be used:
1) As a reagent free method of oxidation/reduction in organic synthesis.
2) Electroanalytical chemistry can be used to rank a series of drugs in their propensity to oxidation when considering their metabolic stability.
The issue with electrochemistry of the past was the electrochemical technology. Traditional electrochemical equipment was developed by electrochemists for use by electrochemists. A chemist who wishes to use electrochemical techniques is interested in the product of the experiment and not in the electrochemistry itself.
The problems with traditional electrochemistry have been:
1) ISSUE ONE - Large bulky potentiostats occupying too big a footprint on the bench space.
2) ISSUE TWO - Too many cables; traditional electrochemical experiments involve lots of trailing cables with often five or more cables including: working electrode, reference electrode, counter electrode. grounding cable, sensing cable. The issue is the cabling of an electrochemical experiment can be complex, and errors can take place.
3) ISSUE THREE - Traditional electrochemical experiments demand solution volumes of 5 ml to 100 ml. This is a real issue in applications such as medicinal chemistry where the compounds are always scarce.
4) ISSUE FOUR - Electrochemists are often using aqueous solutions whilst chemists, organics chemists/synthetic chemists are often using organic solvents. The issue is that the materials used in traditional electrochemical experiments may not always be resistant to organic solvents.
Find out more about the Modern Approach to Organic Electroanalytical Chemistry on our website here.
Gold screen printed electrodes and organic solvents
At Zimmer and Peacock we have electrodes for different applications, a SPE that may be good for one application may not work for another application. In this figure you can see the effect of chloroform on one of our electrodes, in this scenario we advise the users to use our gold SPE which are resistant to organic solvents.
Wearable Skin Sensors and understanding the Signal
The purpose of this note is to give a brief synopsis of some preliminary work performed at ZP for measuring the electrical properties of skin.
At Zimmer and Peacock we develop wearable biosensors for our clients and customers, including: lactate, glucose, potassium, sodium, hydration, perspiration/sweat.
In this note we have taken one of our off the shelf sensors and investigated them for measuring the conductivity of the skin, applications of such sensors can be used to monitor the surface of the skin or depending on the excitation signal we use we can penetrate into the skin and determine the conductivity below the top layer of skin.
The sensors we used for these conductivity based sensors are shown in this figure. You can find out more on our website here.
