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different pieces in the dark. But in sunlight, more compounds were released, ranging from 5,000 to 15,000 dissolved compounds, which equates to 1.1-fold to 50fold increases over the number of compounds released in the dark. Of the approximately 9,000 molecules generated by the pure polymer when exposed to sunlight, only about a quarter overlapped with those from the bags. Based on these results, the researchers say that sunlight’s reactions with solid plastics can transform them into a plethora of water-soluble compounds whose levels and identities vary, depending on the additives used.
The authors acknowledge funding from The Seaver Institute, the Gerstner Family Foundation, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program, Division of Chemistry and Division of Materials Research.
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From the ACS Press Room
Licking a Tootsie Roll® Sensor to Monitor Health
“Soft Candy as an Electronic Material Suitable for Salivary Conductivity-Based Medical Diagnostics in Resource-Scarce Clinical Settings” ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
Single-use diagnostic tests often aren’t practical for health professionals or patients in resource-limited areas, where cost and waste disposal are big concerns. So, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have turned to a surprising material, Tootsie Roll® candy, to develop an inexpensive and low-waste device. The candy was used as an electrode, the part of the sensor that detects salt and electrolyte levels in saliva, to monitor ovulation status or kidney health.
Disposable test strips have advanced the speed and accuracy of at-home health monitoring. For example, ovulation predictor kits measure luteinizing hormone levels, and there are test strips that measure creatinine levels for patients with chronic kidney disease. However, their costs add up quickly and, between the packaging and the strips themselves, there’s a lot of waste that needs to be disposed of. Previous researchers have indicated that simple measurements of a person’s salivary salt and electrolyte content
could be appropriate for managing some conditions. So, Beelee Chua and Donghyun Lee wanted to repurpose unconventional and widely available materials, including electrically conductive soft candies, into an easily accessible, low-waste sensor that could simply be licked by patients to analyze their saliva.
To make the prototype sensor, the researchers first flattened a Tootsie Roll® and pressed crevices into its surface in a cross-
An electrode made with a
hatched pattern to hold the saliva sam-
molded Tootsie Roll® and
aluminum tubes can help
monitor ovulation status and
ple. Then, they inserted two thin, reusable aluminum
kidney health. Credit: Adapted from ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 2021, DOI: 10.1021/
tubes, which acted acsami.1c11306 as electrical contacts, connecting the candy electrode into a circuit with a current source and an output voltage detector. In preliminary tests, the device could measure salt levels that were physiologically relevant for health
