Passive and Wireless, Ion-Selective Sensor Arrays for Multimineral Comonitoring of Food

Abstract

Ion consumption plays key roles in maintaining bodily homeostasis and health. Here passive wireless, multimineral comonitoring arrays are studied that may potentially be utilized for emerging applications in precision nutrition. RF biosensors targeting select minerals (calcium or magnesium demonstrated herein) are built from integrating ion-selective membranes within a broadside-coupled split ring resonator architecture. RF sensors are typically monitored one at a time and such platforms often are incapable of comeasuring multiple confounding components. To address this challenge, this sensor arrays are further directly integrated alongside a conformal, custom readout coil that optimizes multi-RF sensor readout. Such optimized networks exhibit enhanced signal clarity, further facilitating coextraction of multiple ion components. A simple method of extracting multimineral concentrations from food even despite the imperfect selectivity of divalent ion-selective membranes is introduced. This passive wireless, zero-electronic ion-monitoring platform integrates seamlessly on foodware or packaging, possessing many applications in food measurement.