Climate changes increase the severity and frequency of flooding thus spreading pollution and exposing water to contamination. Oil-shale is a source of fuel but it is also a source of mercury and other heavy-metal pollution. Water control agencies are at the front-line of monitoring groundwater quality and tracking pollution. Budget and manpower cuts make these tasks more difficult. Regulations push towards real-time, on-site or in situ analyses to improve the reliability of monitoring, the representatively of sampling and faster information requires fast, portable, low-cost, environmentally friendly, sensitive sensors that are able to quantify heavy metals in different types of water. The problem with conventional sampling is the collection of water, preservation, shipping and storing. Sampling changes the water: pH and oxygen content. This changes the concentration and oxidation state of metal ions and only gives a snap-shot of quality. Thus the trend in water monitoring is passive or in situ sampling. Passive sampling is done by placing cartridges into a body of water. The cartridges contain metal ion chelating polymers that selectively adsorb and pre-concentrate metal ions. After two weeks, the samplers are recovered and sent to a lab for extraction and analysis. The advantages of passive sampling are that the limits of detection (LODs) are very low, due to metal ion pre-concentration. Analysis results better represent the water, since passive samplers are at equilibrium with it. The problem with passive samplers is the long sampling times, the extraction and expensive analysis by atomic adsorption spectroscopy (AAS) or inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS). Two particularly difficult toxic metal ions are mercury and chromium (VI). Allowed levels for mercury are sub µg/L (0.015 µg/L potable water and 0.5 µg/L residual waters - French water norms of 27 October 2011). Due to volatility, mercury is analysed separately from other metals. Mercury analysis is usually performed by AAS or ICP-MS with cold vapour trapping. AAS and ICP-MS are time consuming and require a centralised lab with trained personnel. Chromium (VI) can be analysed by colourimetry but lacks sensitivity. It can be analysed by LC-ICP-MS but this is rare in private labs. Chromium (VI) analysis requires fast analysis due to potential changes between sampling and analysis. Most of the current technology is not adequate to meet the demands of sensor manufacturers or end users. Electrochemical sensors are cheap with fast response times. The most sensitive are based on toxic mercury and the cheapest are disposable screen printed electrodes (SPE), that are portable and non-toxic but lack sub µg/L sensitivity. Moreover, mercury based electrochemical systems cannot detect mercury. For these reasons a consortium of two public research labs, LSI and BRGM, a private lab, SGS MULTILAB, and a small enterprise which devlopes prototypes and series, VALOTEC, have joined to validate the potential of a patented 3-D membrane sensor developed by the LSI, able to quantify heavy metals, notably mercury but also Chromium (VI), at trace levels, in situ, on-site and/or on-line, using passive sampling. The new sensitive 3-D membrane sensors passively pre-concentrate metal ions by a chelating polymer and obtain equilibrium with the environment. The adsorption time is 30 minutes to twenty four hours and the analysis is rapid and on-site thus bridging the gap between passive samplers and electrochemical sensors. This environmentally friendly sensor relies on ion-track etched nano-functionalized membranes made of bio-compatible polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF). The sensors measures heavy metals well below the limitations imposed by existing norms making them competitive with electrodes containing toxic mercury. If proven reliable and cost effective, the sensor could be integrated into existing systems, or used standalone as portable devices.

While blindness and deafness are widely recognized by the medical community and the society, permanent loss of smell (anosmia), despite being frequent (5% of the global population), deeply altering the quality of life (loss of appetite, social distress) and causing numerous health issues (household hazards, depression, death), did not benefit from much consideration before the COVID-19 pandemic. This disease dramatically increased the incidence of olfactory dysfunction, which is encountered in more than 60% of cases. If most patients recover in a few weeks, about 5 % have still not recovered. Until now, olfactory training has been the only treatment associated with significant benefits for smell recovery, but did not benefit all the patients. Moreover, it is restricted to post-viral anosmia, and there’s currently no treatment for long-lasting anosmia. The DOLFINA project aims to develop an olfactory implant, based on the same concept as the cochlear implant, which has been successfully used to treat patients suffering from deafness. Firstly, we propose to develop sets of electrical stimulation of the olfactory bulb in a rat model that mimics the odorant driven activation of olfactory processing structures by different odorants. Then, we will develop an odorant sensor (electronic nose) able to transform the detection of a given odorant into a specific electrical stimulation. Finally, we will validate the olfactory implant in a rat model, then test it in a sheep model, which is anatomically closer to humans, before its future implementation for the first time in an anosmic patient.

The MULTIPAS-2 project aims to study and develop a multi-gas/multi-laser sensor, based on tunable lasers photoacoustic spectroscopy, dedicated to ambient air sensing and quantification, as defined by the project end-user, Environnement SA. Even if sensors with high sensitivity already exist, they are limited with some specifications such as: single-gas sensors, very cumbersome, complex to use and maintenance needed, complex calibration…. The proposed sensor will provide equivalent or much better performances in terms of sensitivity and selectivity, but for a much smaller footprint and addressing several gas species simultaneously, which is a major technological breakthrough. The high performances required for optical sensors with low cost can be achieved by using resonant quartz photoacoustic detection technique (QEPAS, Quartz Enhanced Photoacoustic Spectroscopy). MULTIPAS-2 proposes technology progresses both in the development of laser sources and in QEPAS spectrophone, paying significant efforts on compacification of optical sensing platform and electronic boards. 5 partners are involved, 2 are academic and 3 are industrial partners: the IES, the LPCA, MIRSENSE, VALOTEC and ENVIRONMENT SA. Semiconductor laser sources (emitting between 2 and 10 µm, single-frequency, high power) will be provided by the IES and MIRSENSE, and implanted by MIRSENSE on a SiGe platform to integrate several sources addressing different gases at different wavelengths on a single chip. This step is the first technological breakthrough that will be achieving for the first time an hybrid multi-source component (SiGe/GaAs/GaSb). Individual sources may initially be supplied to laboratories working on the development of the QEPAS measurement technique. QEPAS offers the advantage of being a simple, compact, yet highly sensitive and selective. IES and LPCA will work on the development and optimization of the QEPAS setups, first with individual sources provided by the IES and MIRSENSE and then with the SiGe integrated source. The compacification of the whole system without losing the sensitivity combined with a simultaneous measurement of various gaseous species is another technological breakthrough. VALOTEC will be responsible of the electronic maps implementation for various needed functions for the laser sources operation and the QEPAS signal processing. Environnement SA will qualify the developed sensor by comparative measurements of single-gas sensors. Thanks to the compact size of the device combined with its multi-species specificity, the sensor is not only suitable for significant industrial and societal applications (measurement of gas production sites, impact of air quality in urban areas ...), but also for the general public (multi-gas control in individual houses, control of indoor air in vehicles ...). In the future, mass production could swing against the currently still-high manufacturing cost of semiconductor lasers, with a sensor whose production cost may not exceed 1.000 euros, knowing that at the moment, single-gas analyzers prices present in the market are sold between 8000 € and 12000 €. This project proposes a close collaboration between academic and industrial partners, with a carefully adjusted budget.

The BiOSS team, ITODYS laboratory, UMR 7086, U.Paris Cité and CNRS, has been collaborating since 2016 with the company ValoTec for the development of medical devices (MD): biochemical sensors to monitor a biomarker, and physical sensors (pressure, pH , temperature, humidity), to which are added MEMS sensors for actimetry, so as to associate the biochemical state with the patient's activity. ValoTec has a commercial activity in the field of service and prototyping; more particularly, it masters the electronic, software, data transmission and regulatory aspects of medical devices. The BiOSS team masters the chemistry of materials, surface functionalizations, several 2D printing technologies, and the scientific and practical aspects of biochemical, chemical and physical sensors. This complementary, combined know-how makes it possible to develop systems up to high TRLs (6 and more) capable of attracting start-ups, ETIs or large industrial groups. The main scientific issue of the LabCom concerns surface functionalization by printing. Printing makes it possible to locate a layer on a substrate and to induce a local physico-chemical property (e.g. hydrophilic/hydrophobic character for fluidic channels), an optical property (e.g. chromophores), a biochemical reactivity (enzymes, nanozymes, antibodies , nanobodies, CRISPR/Cas…). This surface functionalization must be multi-scale: screen printing for objects requiring large thicknesses (200 um resolution, thickness > 10 um, e.g. fluidic channels or conductive tracks), inkjet (50-100 um resolution, 1-10 nm thickness, for local functionalization), capillary nanoprinting (resolution 50 nm, thickness 1-10 nm, for the most resolved active functions, e.g. resistors, transistors, MEMS). These processes allow the realization of complex devices on flexible, conformable, extensible, compressible substrates... applicable for example on the skin for the monitoring of physiological parameters such as the pH of the exudate of a wound, the pressure that a patient exerts on a part of his body, his stress, the analysis of a movement, the humidity of a bandage, the presence of a bacterial contaminant... Thin and conformable, these devices can be placed on all types of surfaces and objects, including pre-existing MDs (masks for sleep apnea, prostheses, monitoring in functional rehabilitation, etc.) in the form of a "patch" that very easily add one or more functions to a pre-existing object without it having to be redesigned and reindustrialized. The BiOSS team masters these concepts, manufactures physical and (bio)chemical sensors from centimetric to nanometric and develops its functionalization processes with state-of-the-art equipment; but connecting them, interfacing them with portable electronics, testing them in situ and designing them with regard to MD regulations escapes him, whereas this is ValoTec's business. The innovation objectives relate to the sensor-electronics-software integration chain, with a focus on alternative methods of small and medium-scale production that do not require the investments and energy consumption of conventional microfabrication, additive rather than subtractive. therefore less greedy in raw materials. The coupling of several sensors of different natures will also allow the fusion of data and the contextualization of measurements which, taken alone, have a limited medical significance. BiOSS – ValoTec interactions are envisaged over a minimum of 10 years, through the strengthening of the dedicated and co-located team of engineers and researchers and an initial focus on connected dressings, skin patches and patches added to existing MDs.