Miniaturization of an Osmotic Pressure-Based Glucose Sensor for Continuous Intraperitoneal and Subcutaneous Glucose Monitoring by Means of Nanotechnology.

The Sencell sensor uses glucose-induced changes in an osmotic pressure chamber for continuous glucose measurement. A final device shall have the size of a grain of rice. The size limiting factor is the piezo-resistive pressure transducers inside the core sensor technology (resulting chamber volume: 70 µL. To achieve the necessary miniaturization, these pressure transducers were replaced by small (4000 × 400 × 150 nm³) nano-granular tunneling resistive (NTR) pressure sensors (chamber volume: 750 nL). For benchmark testing, we filled the miniaturized chamber with bovine serum albumin (BSA, 1 mM) and exposed it repeatedly to distilled water followed by 1 mM BSA solution. Thereafter, we manufactured sensors with glucose testing chemistry (ConcanavalinA/dextran) and investigated sensor performance with dynamic glucose changes between 0 and 300 mg/dL. Evaluation of the miniaturized sensors resulted in reliable pressure changes, both in the BSA benchmark experiment (30-35 mBar) and in the dynamic in vitro continuous glucose test (40-50 mBar). These pressure results were comparable to similar experiments with the previous larger in vitro sensors (30-50 mBar). In conclusion, the NTR pressure sensor technology was successfully employed to reduce the size of the core osmotic pressure chamber by more than 95% without loss in the osmotic pressure signal.