Indian's smart way to smell stale stuff

V Subramanian is evolving a technique to track food's freshness scientifically, reports Kanupriya Vashisht.

American consumers might soon stop turning food products up and down at a Wal-Mart, trying to check for that ever-evasive expiry date on milk, yoghurt or cereal.

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Vivek Subramanian, a leading researcher in polysilicon technology and organic electronics at the University of California, Berkeley, is developing a technique that will disregard doubtful dates and track food's freshness scientifically.

Subramanian's research group is developing a host of innovative smart sensors like the food expiry detector.

The sensors will keep track of bacteria levels independently and detect gas emissions within a closed environment, such as a milk bottle, letting consumers accurately know when food is no longer consumable - and possibly dangerous to ingest.

The research focuses on the physics and technology of organic semiconductors and their applications in displays, low-cost electronics, sensors, and actuators.

"The basic concept," the Berkley website says, "is trying to use gas or fluid sensing to detect bacterial activity."

To realise such a widely deployed technology, Subramanian and his students have researched for material systems that could be developed into a low cost technology.

The Subramanian group is working on a multi-disciplinary project spread across chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering.

The result is an extraordinary inkjet printer and a family of electronic inks that enable circuits to be patterned onto paper, plastic, or cloth without damaging the material.

Composed of carbon and hydrogen as opposed to silicon, the circuits are soluble and inexpensive.

Food processing is not the only thing that has caught this researcher's fancy. He'd like to compute clothes to by dispersing sensors throughout the apparel, sensors that can detect what's going on in the world around you.

Some might detect toxic gases or radiation, others could monitor your body temperature and blood pressure, and still others might even track where you are through the Global Positioning System.

Subramanian envisions his woven transistors as switches that route signals through the fabric of the smart clothes.

Like the full-fledged routers on the Internet, the little chips direct the course of the signals through the fabric, helping the clothing-based network deal with rips and tears that might otherwise disconnect circuits.

The lab prototypes of smart clothing using Subramanian's fabrics are still five years off. And it could be another five years before the fabric can be turned into commercial products.

In addition to smart sensors, the Subramanian group is developing organic electronics for inexpensive plastic screens that can be rolled up and stuffed in a consumer's pocket.

These high-performance disposable transistors promise an unprecedented deployment of portable electronic technologies, ushering in a revolution in the field of disposable electronics and wireless.

After a PhD at Stanford University, Vivek Subramanian co-founded Matrix Semiconductor in 1998, creating three-dimensional integrated circuits with standard manufacturing techniques and materials.

Matrix's first product, a non-volatile 3-D memory chip attracted many customers due to its size and tremendous cost benefits.

Dr Subramanian has held numerous consulting and advisor positions for leading semiconductor companies.

He currently sits on the Technology Advisory Board for ITU Ventures and continues to advise Matrix on process and device technology development.