Photonics Integrated Circuit Enabled Miniature On-Chip Urine Test system with High Sensitivity and Reliability

Urine testing is an effective method for routine health monitoring. Spectroscopy-based urine test offers a highly sensitive and accurate urine test method with much less clinical lab equipment requirement. Existing spectroscopy urine test systems are still bulky, heavy, costly, and with high power consumption and thus not suitable for astronaut health monitoring in space. Photonics integrated circuits (PIC) can integrate numerous photonics devices with a great variety of functionalities in a single ultra-small chip, offering ultra-high performance with extremely low power consumption and significantly improved reliability. This STTR project aims to leverage the advantages provided by cutting-edge PIC technologies and develop a miniature on-chip urine test system with significantly reduced size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP) and improved reliability for routine astronaut health monitoring. In phase, I, the proposed PIC-enabled on-chip urine test system will be evaluated and compared with existing technologies. Optimal design of the PIC based broadband spectroscopic urine test system with high performance and ultra-low SWaP will be obtained. In Phase II, a prototype of the miniature PIC-based broadband spectroscopic urine test system with ultra-low SWaP will be developed and tested. Urine testing with high sensitivity and high accuracy will be demonstrated.

The PIC-based on chip urine test system enables high sensitivity and high reliability urine test with significantly reduced SWaP suitable for space missions. It provides a portable clinical analysis tool for routine astronaut health monitoring with high sensitivity and high accuracy. The on-chip spectroscopy material measurement method can also be used other NASA applications such as water quality monitoring, lab on a chip experiment in space, and space fuel quality measurement.

Portable clinic urine test, blood glucose measurement, and routine health check, etc. portable high spectral resolution chemical and biological solution analysis for chemical solution identification and contamination analysis. High spectral definition IR spectroscopy in a liquid phase. Medical diagnoses, chemical solution process control, and drug monitoring.

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