A few of the technologies developed successfully at Centre for excellence IISC, IITB, IITM, IITD under the Nanotechnology Programme are:

Diabetes, Anaemia and Malnutrition, Kidney and Liver disease Monitoring system

Based on electrochemical biosensors research carried out at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), a Start-up company PathShodh Healthcare Pvt Ltd has been incubated at IISc Bangalore. PathShodh has introduced first of its kind handheld device with the capability to measure multiple biomarkers specifically targeting Diabetes and its complications, Kidney disease, Anemia and Liver related ailments. The product has already been deployed in the field and is currently going through ISO 13485 and CE certification.

PathShodh's existing platform technology, "anuPath (TM)", to measure multiple bio-markers is proposed to be redesigned and validated to test COVID-19. Since, there is no strip based test available for COVID-19 at present anywhere in the world, a disposable test strips utilizing a novel receptor chemistry to perform highly accurate and sensitive COVID-19 antibody (IgG and IgM) test is proposed. The test may be done with tiny finger prick blood sample in shorter time at substantially low cost lesser than ELISA kit. For more details visit: https://pathshodh.com/media.php

 

Portable Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Platform

Under the NNetRA project funded by MeitY, a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) System to detect blood related diseases has been developed by IISc to detect Malaria and other blood related diseases. The system uses PCR-Thermal Cyclers in conjunction with adapter chain and fluorescence reader unit.  Technology for the same has been transferred to a Start-up Shanmukha Innovations Pvt Ltd incubated at IISc for its commercialization.

This start-up would be developing portable molecular diagnostic lab for COVID-19 testing. Instead of existing RT-PCR for testing COVID-19, it uses PCR-Thermal Cyclers in conjunction with adapter chain and fluorescence reader unit, considered equivalent to that of gold standard technology namely RT-PCR. The system would enable shorter turn-around-time compared to 24-72 hours with central labs with capability of processing and testing larger number of samples/day/unit. For more details visit https://covid19.iisc.ac.in/mobile-diagnostic-testing-lab-for-covid-19/

 

Gas Sensors

Under the NNetRA project of MeitY, Gas sensors (for multiple identified gases NO2, O2 and N2H4 and H2) have been developed by IISc Bangalore with the following deliverables:

• Scaling up of metal oxide gas sensor technology for routine production.
• Long term reliability assessment of metal oxide gas sensors.
• Field deployment of gas sensors with potential partners from strategic sectors and industry.
• SCL, Mohali has been given the technology for the development of NO2, O2 and N2H4 and H2 sensors for strategic applications. Field trials of these sensors have already been performed at SHAR, Sriharikota. The sensors are also undergoing field trials for their possible use in railway coaches.
• Since N2 and O2 gases are mixed in different ratios in ventilator, it is important to measure the precise concentration of O2 in the gas pushed by ventilator into patient’s lungs. In a very short time, using 3D printed package, the project team was able to deliver O2 gas sensor chip to be used in ventilators.
• This sensor chip is also being used in another project on “Oxygen concentrator”, to generate 100% oxygen from ambient air by filtering N2 gas out in a membrane.

 

Portable Imaging Flow Cytometer for Malaria Detection

Microfluidic chip with channels on PDMS/PC/PMMA, to detect the flow of PS beads/cells through the channels are used for flow cytometry system for blood cell counting of atleast 20 L/min with integrated optical system consisting of Light Emitting Diode (LEDs) of nominal wavelength 633 nm and 488 nm with a power of 10-20 mW. Two prototypes have been developed using microfluidics technology, one on cell phone and another on the digital camera platform.

 

Soil moisture sensor

IIT Bombay has developed and tested two prototypes for soil moisture sensor– one with Temperature pulse probe and second with electrochemical potential principle. Also a cantilever based soil moisture sensor system has been developed which has a wireless connectivity. Further work is continued on the instrumentation aspects of wireless sensor nodes for agricultural systems.

 

Explosive Vapour Sensor

Explosive Vapour Sensor using poly (3-hexythiophene) and Cu-tetraphenyl-porphyrin composite based organic field effect transistor has been developed. This technology can detect vapours of explosives.     

Gas Sensor Array for Environmental Pollution Monitoring:

A 4 element Metal oxide gas sensor array chip has been developed to sense CO2 gas in the range of 350 ppm to 1000 ppm. The sensor consumes extremely low power of about 50mW for 4 sensors, and is selective against gases such as SO2, CO and NOx. A low cost sensor platform for determining ionizing radiation using sensors based on organic semiconducting materials has been demonstrated.

 

Health Care – Silicon Locket

A web enabled efficient and intelligent remote health care system for cardiac diagnostics entitled ‘Silicon Locket’ has been developed.

 

MEMS pressure sensor

Design, fabrication and testing of a Nanocrystalline silicon MEMS pressure sensor in the range of 1mbar to1bar.

Neuroelectronics

A top down process has been developed to create transistors with nano needles on top of the gate oxide, to sense intracellular action potential. The process is capable of creating array of Nano needle Gated FETs (NGFETs).

Envirobat Wireless Sensor for Air Quality

A system prototype of wireless sensor for air quality has been developed for environmental monitoring with following capabilities:

• Real time sensors for CO, CO2, SO2, NO2, humidity, temperature,
• Wireless transmission of sensor data through GSM link
• On board memory for data logging
• Server side software for data analysis and rendering
• Probing each of the device in a deployed Envirobat network

 

SENFLEX- T- is an affordable diagnostic intervention for the detection of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) or the health of human lungs. The system is IOT-MD enabled and integrated with ML-models. The system can be used at home by patients without any medical professional.

The Smart Mask is for regulating the breath exercises at home for betterment of lungs health.

SQUID based Magnetic Sensor:

Ultrasensitive magnetic field sensor has been developed at IIT Delhi under NNetRA project for detecting weak magnetic moments from rock samples. It is based on a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). SQUID can measure an extremely small magnetic field, voltage or current as it works on the principle of Josephson effect and flux quantization.

 

Mobilab:

Mobilab- Affordable Smart Device to detect Liver and Pacreatic Disroder:

A device namely Mobilab developed at IIT Guwahati is an affordable portable IOT enabled solution to detect Liver and Pacreatic Disroder. It is a Smartphone-sized medical device that fits in the palm of your hand, requires no heavy set-up or lab infrastructure, and can be readily placed in a doctor's clinic/PHC/CHC center’s or as a bedside device for rapid results. It's Simple to Use! Anyone who knows how to use a smartphone can operate device with ease, and testing takes only four simple steps

 

OTP memory:

IIT Bombay in collaboration with SCL Chandigarh have invented a "memory technology" that has the potential to revolutionize the indigenous semiconductor product landscape by providing a secure memory and hardware encryption. OTP memory is first indigenous memory developed on a 180 nm CMOS technology platform. The applications enable products like secure microprocessors, smart cards for driver’s license, e-passport, secure SIM card etc. These are of critical interest to national security of public, strategic and private infrastructure for data communications/storage and authentication from smart cities to strategic asset management to home IoT systems.

 

Flexible and bendable Li-ion battery for Flexible Electronics Devices:

C-MET, Pune has successfully developed thin, flexible and bendable Li ion pouch type battery to power up smart watch and LED displays. The design of cell/battery is according to the need of electronic smart watch. The cell is able to provide the current upto one week in a single charge. The capacity of the fabricated cell is 25 mAh and can be charged in 3 hrs. In house developed Flexible Li ion battery for Wrist Watch and LED display:

Nanomaterial based Air quality monitoring system:

Air quality monitoring (AQM) system has been developed at IISc Bangalore using functionalized nano-material for selective detection of NH3, NOx with a suitable electronics platform having specialized analog front-end and wireless communication facilities. The system also has commercial VOCs, CO, PM10, PM2.5, humidity and temperature sensors integrated within the module. AQM can be configured as an IoT with continuous data monitoring through GSM Network on Cloud Platform.

Paper-based microfluidics for on-chip detection of haemoglobin:

A blood haemoglobin estimation device has been developed at IIT Kharagpur by using an ultra-low-cost paper strip. This device is significantly low-cost, implementable without any trained personnel at resource-limited settings and provides quantitative results comparable to the pathological results. This detection method requires only a smartphone for detection. The user protocol is quite simple; require a single drop of finger-prick blood and a drop of reagent on the paper-based reaction chamber. The fabrication procedure is inexpensive and simple but the device provides faster and more precise quantitative results. The device comprises of a paper strip, a Smartphone, and a 3D printed enclosure fitted with LED. It can estimate haemoglobin concentration from a low range of 3.5 g/dL to a high range of 19 g/dL with sensitivity 0.1 g/dL.

Microneedle for painless drug delivery:

A skin dissolving microneedle array patch constituting of curcumin-bioglass composite has been developed at IIT Kharagpur for painless drug delivery. The microneedle arrays will be used for faster healing of deep and sustainable wounds, diabatic wounds where there are threats of biofilm formation. This patch can be applied topically to dress wounds and alleviates pain up to 72 hours. It is self-administrable.

 

Patents

More than 70 patents have been filed under the projects sponsored by Nanotechnology Division. Some of the filed patents are as follows:

1.  “Apparatus for varying resonant frequency in a multi-frequency Radio Frequency (RF) micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) switch”, Sarath G., Amitava DasGupta and Deleep R. Nair, Indian patent Application no: 201641009521; Patent No. 363823
2. “A Conducting Electrochromic Composite Of Metallic Nanowires And Multi-Coloured Thermochromic Materials”, N. Nair, D. Ray, and P. Swaminathan, Indian Patent, Application no. 202041025228, Filed on 16/06/2020.
3. “Electro-Thermochromic Touch Display Devices”, N. Nair, D. Ray, and P. Swaminathan Indian Patent, Application no. 202141014991,
4. “A Printable Wi-Fi Transparent Antenna”, N. Nair, D. Ray, P. Swaminathan, Indian Patent, Application no. 201941012467.
5. “A Method For Patterning of Graphene on a Substrate”, Indian Patent Application no. 201931018426, S. Ragul, S. Dutta, D. Ray,
6. “Method of generating controllably biased random number by OTP devices”, U. Ganguly, S. Sadana, A. Lele. Application No. 201821010427 
7. P. Kumbhare, S. Sadana, U. Ganguly “One Time Programmable Memory for Encryption and Reconfigurable Circuits”, Application No. 201621031483
8. “Steerable Plasmonic Nanoantennas”, P. Savaliya, N. Gupta, and A. Dhawan Patent Application No: 201911042206
9. “Membrane-less microfluidic reactor with asymmetric electrolyte for water splitting and process for producing the same”, Suddhasatwa Basu, Neeraj Khare, Biswajit De, Aditya Singh Patent Application No: 202011022122
10. “Membrane-Less Two-Phase Flow Microfluidic Electrolysis Cell - Fuel Cell Tandem Operation”, Suddhasatwa Basu, Neeraj Khare, Biswajit De, Aditya Singh, Anastasia Elias Patent Application No: 202111016631
11. “Hollow beam bistable MEMS switch”, V. Agarwal, B. Mitra Patent Application No: 201811041011
12. Low-temperature lead-free high performance piezoelectric thin films R. S. Deol, S. Saha, M. Mehra, B. Mitra, and M. Singh Patent Application No: 201811044238
13. “Low-cost solution-deposited Electrochemical Sensor”, P. Vinayak, H. S. Devi, S. Saha, M. Singh, B. Mitra Patent Application No: 2018363412
14. Nano Heterostructures of Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Sensing Film Based Extended Gate Field-Effect Transistor for the Sensing of Heavey Metals P. Vinayak, Md. Samim Hasan, B. Mitra, S. Sapra, M. Singh Patent Application No: 201911049144
15. A Self-Regenerated Catalyst for Odor Killer Neeraj Khare, Mohd. Faraz Application no. 201911020974
16. Design of Photoreactor using nanocomposites for degradation of organic dyes Neeraj Khare, Mohd. Faraz Patent application no. 201911043675
17. A method of Fabricating a flexible nano-composite film with enhanced triboelectric effect Neeraj Khare, Huidrom Hemojit Singh Patent Application No: 201811022094
18. Smartphone based blood hemoglobin estimation system. Indian Patent.
19. “Regioregular Conjugated Polymers Based on 3, 4-b-diheteropentalenes” Anil Kumar, Indian Patent.
20. “Regioregular Conjugated Copolymers Based on Thieno[3,4-b] thiophene and process for preparation of same” Anil Kumar, Indian Patent.
21. “Nickel (0) Catalyzed Kumada Chain Transfer Polycondensation” Anil Kumar, Indian Patent.
22. “A Novel Process to get highly Conducting and Highly Transparent Thin Films and its Applications as Transparent Conductor” Anil Kumar, Smita Mukherjee, Indian Patent.
23. “Novel Homogeneous Nickel (II) Catalyst” Anil Kumar, Indian Patent.
24. “Automated Clinical Microscopy by Image‐based Flow Cytometer for Analyzing Substances and a Method Thereof” by Sai Siva Gorthi and Veerendra Kalyan Jagannadh. Indian Provisional Patent.
25. “Double Quantum Well Enhancement Mode Nitride HEMT” Indian Patent.
26. “An Improved Molecular Beam Epitaxy Multi Chamber Cluster Tool and Processes For Integration Of Multiple Growth Combination Of Group III-V Semiconductor Heterostructures”. Indian Patent.
27.  Novel Ways of Introducing High Voltage Handling Capabilities in FinFET Technologies – US patent. 
28. Sandwich Tunneling Barrier FET - US patent. An N-Type Tunnel-FET device with strained SiGe layer at source - Indian Patent
29. A sub-threshold forced plate FET sensor for sensing inertial displacement, a method and system thereof - Indian Patent
30. A sub-threshold elastic deflection FET sensor for sensing pressure/force, a method and system thereof - Indian Patent

Publications

More than 2000 research papers have been published and many proof of concepts for various devices have been demonstrated under the programme.