According to Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council, a group of researchers from Iran and Spain produced laboratorial sample of sensors made of nanopaper to introduce bacterial cellulose nanopaper as a biological substrate for the production of optical transparent nanosensors.
The biodegradable sensors are cheap and have desirable optical and mechanical properties. In case the sensors are mass-produced, they can be used in medical and clinical diagnosis systems to measure and detect disease agents and also chemical and biological measurements.
Nanopaper is a sheet made of dense cellulose nanofibers. Bacteria cellulose (BC) nanopapers have unique properties, including biocompatibility, biodegradability, optical transparency and mechanical and thermal stability. Therefore, these materials have applications in the novel medical technologies, electronic devices, solar cells, membranes, nanocomposites, foodstuff industry, medical industry, packaging and so on.
According to the researchers, the biological structure, reasonable price, biodegradability and flexibility with optical and mechanical properties are the reasons for the use of bacteria nanopaper because the majority of transparent substrates used in the production of optical sensors are expensive, toxic and non-biodegradable.
These types of nanosensors have potential applications in the production of a new generation of chemical and biological nanosensors, and their replacement with usual devices in spectrophotometric and fluorimetric measurements.
Primary results of the research have been published in Biosensors & Bioelectronics, vol. 74, 2015, pp. 353-359, and the final results have been published in ACS Nano, vol. 9, issue 7, 2015, pp. 7296-7305.