Sionex - Sensor Chips for Chemical and Biological Detection Devices

Sionex Corporation is a high technology company that provides its partner companies with breakthrough chemical and biological sensor chips and systems based on its proprietary microDMx™ detection technology.

In today's geopolitical climate, this technology provides vital airport and homeland security, as integrated in new end user products and as a means of upgrading existing airport security systems. For instance, upgrading a smart smoke detector to detect chemical warfare agents, explosives or other compounds could be as easy as downloading new parameters to the device.

Sionex is assembling a variety of platforms incorporating its microDMx™ chips for utilization in a wide range of end user products ranging from handheld devices and control components to sensor modules. The microDMx™ technology has the power to enable a far more widespread use of these chemical and biological agent detection systems due to lower costs, fewer false positives and simplicity of use.

microDMx™ SENSOR CHIP: ION MOBILITY SPECTROSCOPY (IMS) TECHNOLOGY

microDMx™ technology separates and detects ionized compounds based on their differential mobilities through the sensor chip. Ionized compounds have mobilities that are a function of their charge, mass and cross-sectional area.

Applying an RF and DC field to the sensor chip can act as a filter selecting a chosen ion or collection of ions. The applied DC and RF fields can be used as parameters to identify the ions together with additional information (field dependence) which is unique to microDMx™ technology.

Whereas conventional IMS (ion mobility spectroscopy) samples as little as 1% of the ionized species, the microDMx™ chip samples close to 100%, resulting in increased sensitivity. Conventional IMS also suffers from the inability to positively identify ions because it only uses one parameter at a time, whereas microDMx™ technology uses at least four independent parameters simultaneously.

Further advantages of the microDMx™ chips include lower manufacturing costs due to MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) manufacturing, and its small compact "chip-sized" package.

SIONEX DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM (SDP) FOR BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL AGENT DETECTION SYSTEMS

In order for potential partners to ascertain specific applicability, Sionex has produced a development platform that allows basic testing and discovery of the microDMx™ technology for a wide range of applications.

The SDP (Sionex Development Platform) is available on a short-term lease with all the necessary hardware and software, including a laptop computer to achieve some basic understanding of the capabilities of the microDMx™ technology.

While these development platforms are not optimized for any specific application they give an indication of the sensitivity and selectivity which can be achieved. During the entire evaluation process our team of applications chemists and engineers are available to assist our partners.

PLATFORMS FOR CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL SENSORS

The microDMx™ sensor chip and the associated electronics are built into a number of platforms, which can be incorporated into a variety of end user products by our partners.

The basic platform includes the microDMx™ sensor chip with temperature and pressure compensation and control, together with a microprocessor to control the radio frequency and compensation voltages, etc. This platform is aimed at incorporation into end user products as a replacement for existing detector technologies.

Later platforms are being developed which will become the basis for handheld products and small portable devices as well as industrial components for widespread use as a sensor.

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