FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - The University of Arkansas has won a $1 million grant to start a new center that may produce smaller, more sensitive sensors for potential use in industry, medicine, food processing and everyday life.

The University will receive the grant over the next two years from the National Science Foundation, along with matching funds from the University, to create the Center for Advanced Sensing Technology, said Distinguished Professor of chemistry Charles Wilkins, principal investigator for the grant.

"The overall idea is to study sensing technology from fundamental research to application," Wilkins said.

The University already has most of the faculty and technology in place to create such a center, Wilkins said.

"We have campus facilities that are state of the art for engineering and fabricating these items," Wilkins said. The recently established University of Arkansas statewide mass spectrometry facility includes two new mass spectrometers funded by a previous NSF grant, and four other chemistry professors, Don Bobbitt, Ingrid Fritsch Ken Turnbull and David Paul, are involved in work to create small sensors. Other faculty involved in the center’s initial phase include researchers in poultry science and engineering.

Current sensors tend to be large, slow and place bound, like instruments used on poultry to test for bacterial contamination. Paul, Yanbin Li, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering, and Michael Slavik, professor of poultry science, work together to try to make better sensors to test for salmonella and camphylobacter, bacteria harmful to humans. To do so, sensors have to become smaller and work faster.

The researchers have already increased the speed of bacterial detection.

"There’s still a lot to be done," Paul said. "We’re hoping the center will help us speed up the research."

That’s where fundamental research combined with applications come into play.

"It takes all three of us to get this done," Paul said.

Manufacturers could also use real-time sensors to monitor their chemicals for the correct balance. Other food processors could use real-time sensors to detect contamination in their products. Such sensors might one-day prevent scares like the Coca-Cola contamination in Europe this summer, Wilkins said.

Wilkins likened the idea of smaller sensors to the downsizing of computers.

"Computers used to fill whole buildings. Now you can purchase inexpensive, hand-held computers," he said. "You could foresee a similar trend in sensors."

Some companies, including Eastman Chemical Company, Danaher Tool Group and the Beaver Water District, saw the potential benefit of such research and wrote letters in support of the sensor grant.

"They are aware of their needs in this area," Wilkins said. "If we develop better sensors it would help them in their missions."

The grant provides funds for hiring a combinatorial chemist. Combinatorial chemists often work for drug companies, creating thousands of small scale samples and testing them for various properties, Wilkins said.

"You can apply the same approach to discovering new materials," Wilkins said. Materials are, at this point, the limiting factor in creating smaller sensors, he said.

In the past two years the University has hired Wilkins, who specializes in characterization of materials, and Xiaogang Peng, a nanochemist who works with small crystals and structures. The addition of a combinatorial chemist will take the center to a new level, Wilkins said.

"We’re putting together a critical mass of people in this field," he said.

The researchers will also purchase some additional equipment for the mass spectrometers. One is a robotic auto sampler that will be essential for preparing multiple samples. The other is a high-performance liquid chromatograph, which separates materials in a liquid mixture so they can be sampled individually in the mass spectrometer.

The University will also hire a microfabrication technician to work with the tiny integrated circuits and a chemical instrumentation technician who will take care of the analytical equipment.

Having a University of Arkansas research center with this focus will help faculty attract research funds for their work. As companies in Arkansas and elsewhere begin to see results, Wilkins said more industry and university collaboration will take place.

In addition, such a center, with its interdisciplinary activities and interactions with industry, provides valuable resources for the education of both undergraduate and graduate students who will later become highly competitive future scientists and engineers.

"A lot of businesses in the state could benefit," he said.

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