The chemical warfare agent Sarin is an organophosphate that is highly toxic to humans as they can act as
cholinesterase inhibitors, that disrupts neuromuscular transmission. As these nerve agents are colorless, odorless
and highly toxic, they can be introduced into drinking water as a means of terrorist sabotage. Hence, numerous
innovative devices and methods have been developed for rapid detection of these organophosphates. Microfluidic
technology allows the implementation of fast and sensitive detection of Sarin. In this paper, a micro-total analysis
systems (TAS), also known as Lab-on-a-chip, fitted with an optical detection system has been developed to
analyze the presence of the nerve agent sarin in water samples. In the present set-up, inhibition of co-introduced
cholinesterase and water samples containing trace amounts of nerve agent sarin into the microfluidic device was
used as the basis for selective detection of sarin. The device was fabricated using polymeric micromachining
with PMMA (poly (methymethacrylate)) as the substrate material. A chromophore was utilized to measure
the activity of remnant cholinesterase activity, which is inversely related to the amount of sarin present in the
water samples. Comparisons were made between two different optical detection techniques and the findings
will be presented in this paper. The presented measurement method is simple, fast and as sensitive as Gas
Chromatography.
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