A big push gains on small scale: State funding of research alliances aids International Electronic Machines, UAlbany NanoCollege sensor project

Aug. 17--ALBANY -- Liquids sometimes would find their way into the porous silicon that researchers at the University at Albany were working with, complicating their efforts to use it in optical reflectors and other applications.

But when Ryk E. Spoor, research and development coordinator at International Electronic Machines Corp., an Albany-based measurement and sensor manufacturer, wanted to make a hydration sensor for the military, porous silicon fit the bill.

Now, IEM and the Center for Advanced Technology in Nanomaterials and Nanoelectronics at UAlbany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering are in the second phase of developing tiny sensors for the military. The sensors would be implanted on a tooth in a soldier's mouth, alerting commanding officers to dehydration.

IEM has received $1.8 million in federal Small Business Innovation Research funding to develop the biosensor and a separate sensor that would measure stress on critical helicopter parts. It is working under a program funded by the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research that makes top-level researchers available to smaller New York companies to develop products such as these sensors.

James Castracane, a professor at UAlbany, also is director of the Center for Advanced Technology, or CAT. He works with about 100 companies, two-thirds of them based in New York state. For those out-of-state clients, the goal is to get them to base some operations -- and workers -- here.

"We focus ... on building jobs within the state," Castracane said.

IEM, a 27-employee company (up from 18 three years ago) with annual revenue in the $5 million to $10 million range, gets access to machines costing hundreds of millions of dollars -- as well as researchers and graduate students -- to help bring its sensors to market.

Small companies aren't the only ones that benefit. After all, IBM, Intel and other major companies also have researchers at Albany NanoTech, as the complex of labs and cleanrooms off Fuller Road is often called.

IEM started with a plan to develop tiny sensors that would be attached to the pitch link of a helicopter, a critical piece that adjusts the pitch of the copter's rotors. They would measure stress and fatigue so the part could be replaced well before it failed, but not before it had to be.

The microcircuitry includes both a sensor to measure stress and a transmitter to send the information to a collection point on board the copter. Researchers were able to reduce power needs so the motion of the part itself produced enough energy to operate the circuitry.

The sensors are just 3 millimeters square. After the company and UAlbany demonstrated the technology was feasible, the Army sought their help in developing the sensor to measure dehydration.

The device had to fit inside a soldiers' mouth and be impervious to saliva and food. It, too, would transmit a signal, to a beltpack the soldier wears. From there it would go to a central monitoring point.

Here, too, IEM and UAlbany demonstrated such a device was feasible, and development has moved to the next stage.

The helicopter sensor likely will see its first tests on machinery in September 2008. A dehydration biosensor for lab testing still is more than two years in the future.

IEM, which over its 20-year history has developed sensors and measuring devices used in the railroad industry and other transportation applications, sees a wide range of uses for the two newest sensors.

The stress sensor could monitor everything from railroad tracks to bridges, IEM's Spoor said. Dehydration, meanwhile, is the No. 1 killer of children, and he has hopes these sensors could prevent many of those deaths.

Castracane said UAlbany will take the sensors, figuring out how to design and fabricate them, and determining how they can be mass-produced.

"What we're working on is idea-to-prototype-to-pilot-production, to show this can be done on a scale so that we can transfer it to mass production," Castracane said.

"This is crucial," Spoor said. "We could not even contemplate these projects if Albany NanoTech wasn't here." Anderson can be reached at 454-5323 or by e-mail at eanderson@timesunion.com

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