Gold detects foreign substances

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., have developed a “laboratory on a chip” that allows for quick detection and testing of small amounts of unknown material outside of the traditional laboratory setting. The chemical sampling device, smaller than the tip of a fingernail, uses gold as one of its key components.

The device could be used by soldiers in battle who need to know what chemicals they are encountering, or by environmental inspectors dealing with toxic wastes.

“Because it can work with different types of microanalytical systems, this device is receiving a lot of attention,” says researcher Ronald Manginell, who has been working on the “preconcentrator” (a device that amasses the unknown substance, making it easier to be analyzed) for the past three years.

Project leader Greg-Frye Mason says the new preconcentrator is a vast change from the current sampling devices. It uses standard, integrated circuit-building techniques that allow 200 units to be built on a single 4-inch silicon wafer. The silicon membrane, formed by etching the silicon away, holds a patterned platinum heater, called a micro-hotplate. A thin layer of an adsorbent material goes on the front surface of the heater. Gold pads surround the device and help to connect the platinum heater electrically to the macroscopic. Gold is used because it is an excellent conductor of electricity and can handle high levels of heat.

The preceding is an excerpt from Gold News, a publication of the Washington, D.C.-based Gold Institute.

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