Diabetes mellitus is a potentially lethal disease that affects 7.6 percent of American people. In the US, it is recognized as the 6th leading cause of death. Failure to control blood glucose levels (BGL) in patients with either type of diabetes can lead to other serious complications as well, such as loss of limb, blindness and other health problems. Controlling and monitoring the BGL in post-op and intensive care patients in the hospital is also vital to their health. Currently the most reliable method of monitoring BGL is through an invasive procedure which monitors the amount of glucose in blood directly. A non-invasive glucose sensor would drastically improve the treatment of sensitive patients, and serve to improve the quality of diabetic patients' lives. This glucose sensor is strongly based upon the mercury sensor developed by F.E. Hernandez and his colleagues. Glucose is used as a reducing agent to reduce mercury from Hg2+ to Hg0, which will form amalgams with the gold nanorods in solution. The change in aspect ratio of gold nanorods leads to a change in the UV-Visible spectrum of the solution. The blue shift seen was measured and correlated with the glucose concentration of the system. The system was then tested varying conditions such as pH, temperature, gold nanorod concentration, and mercury concentration. A preliminary study of the kinetics of the reaction was also done. The results showed a limit of detection of 1.58x10-13 and a linear dynamic range covering the concentrations of human tear glucose levels that are currently cited in the literature.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-5049 |
| Date | 01 January 2009 |
| Creators | Wood, Erin |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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