One day diabetics may not use needles, they get insulin from a nanoscopic chip implanted under the skin.
Professor Lon Porter and his research team have been working on a groundbreaking silicon chips research project for the last three years. Since coming to Wabash four years earlier after receiving Ph.D from Purdue, Porter has been devoting a most of his time working in the labs at Hays Hall to achieve the dream of ‘making small chips’.
“Using nanotechnology, we are trying to make smaller silicon chips with large surface areas, onto which we can bind functional molecules selected for a variety of important applications,” Prof. Porter said. “These chips may revolutionize the way we design “real-time” chemical sensors for medical diagnostics and intelligent drug delivery. Similar chips may be used to monitor environmental pollutants, catalyze industrially important reactions, or detect explosives.”
Duncan Dam ’09, Daniel Albrecht ’07, Wassim Labaki ’08 and Jason Siegel ’08 have been helping Prof. Porter to make this research successful.
Porter explained his project deals with small chips that have pores approximately 10,000 times smaller than the width of a single human hair.
“We are currently exploring the fundamental chemistry involved in bonding functional molecules to the silicon chips. There are many methods for doing this, with varying quality, but we are encouraged by a new bonding reaction that uses microwave radiation. We have an advantage of using a microwave apparatus which saves a lot of time in the lab.”
Reactions that previously took 12 hours can be completed in less than 30 minutes. Microwave chemistry is one of the exciting new frontiers in materials design.
“Over the last summer, I stayed here and worked with him [Dr. Porter],” Dam said. “I learned more things in lab than I could have learned from formal academic lectures. Getting hands-on-modern apparatus, which are generally used by grad students, I feel much more privileged than rest of the undergrad students elsewhere. This will definitely help me to prepare for grad school and other research works.”
The assistant professor of chemistry, Dr. Porter, has been continuing the project for the last three years thanks to grants from The Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund. He claims the expertise and equipment required to prepare the porous silicon chips limits the field to a relatively small community of researchers and it allows his group to make a significant contribution to the field.
"If you're diabetic, you often require daily insulin injections. Porous silicon chips, inserted under your skin, may soon be developed to detect blood sugar levels which could relay information to another part of the chip that would then deliver certain amounts of insulin. If these chips prove successful and safe, people may be freed from the worry and inconvenience of daily drug regimens," revealed Porter
He claims the potential product will be non-toxic when used under the skin, as the chips have been shown to be both biocompatible and biodegradable. They eventually degrade to silicic acid, which is efficiently removed from the body via urine.
Labaki, who has worked with Dr. Porter for the last two years, revealed “It was a very interesting and enriching experience because I enhanced my analytical skills, learned new laboratory techniques and had the opportunity to conduct experiments on porous silicon which has a great potential for a variety of applications and promises to introduce important breakthrough in our daily lives.”
“I am honored that he allowed me to join his lab, especially because I have to follow many very intelligent students have worked with him. I was attracted to his research because of the applications that this new technology can offer,“ Siegel said.
The research team has been encouraged by the recent grants from American Chemical Petroleum Society and expects to extend the research to make chips with more complex chemicals.