SENSIT VENTURES, INC. — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase II: 8.130000000000001

Description

This proposal contains proprietary and confidential information provided for the sole purpose of agencyevaluation of technical concepts and should not be disclosed to any person outside of the government.7. AbstractIt is widely appreciated that a variety of new technologies will be required to feed anestimated population of 10 billion people by 2050 with environmentally sustainable production.It is also estimated that about one third (in weight) of the world's food is lost or wasted annually.The simplest solutions are to make better use of existing food production. We believe that accessto better information will improve agricultural practices post-harvest and play an essential role inmaintaining the productive capacity of the planet. Better information begins with better sensors.SensIT Ventures Inc. (SensIT) is commercializing a novel chemical sensor platform thatcombines low-cost and high performance features required for precision agriculture and post- harvest applications. Our miniature chemical sensor platform (½IMS) is a fundamentally newtype of ion mobility spectrometer (IMS) the size of a coin that uniquely runs on low power DCvoltage such as a common 9V battery. For increased sensitivity and resolution the ½IMS can beoptionally coupled to a second custom micropreconcentrator (µPC). VOCs are adsorbed onto theµPC matrix using a micropump and then delivered to the ½IMS by thermal desorption.Both the µPC and ½IMS sensor chips are proprietary to SensIT and can be manufacturedin glass substrates using well-established processes commonly available in the semiconductorindustry for microfabrication of a wide variety of electronic devices including; photolithographychemical etching metal deposition and thermal bonding. We confirmed that VOCs emitted fromtubers infected with major post-harvest rot pathogens can be detected by IMS devices at <100ppb levels of detection without a preconcentrator. Under our Phase I work we transferred thenecessary intellectual property and associated know-how to the company and further establishedrelationships with two leading multinational commercial foundries for scaled-up manufacturing.For hardware development we worked with these commercial partners to iterate designscompatible with their tooling and processes. We received and tested our "first loop" productionlots. Using the µPC we sampled VOCs from commercial potato storage facilities in Idaho andcharacterized 25 compounds by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. In this Phase IIproposal we will custom build and calibrate gas phase sensors to provide an early warning ofpotato rot in the post-harvest supply chain as a first commercial example of the device utility andvalue. We now have access to all the custom and proprietary microchips from commercialsources that can be combined with commercial off the shelf components. In Phase II we proposeto add a partner for a final system-in-package delivery of our first commercial prototypesincluding package design substrate fabrication and assembly. In Phase II we will build anddeploy the prototypes in collaboration with our commercial partners to integrate the technologywith customer needs and according to their specifications.Post-harvest diseases cause major economic losses. There is strong commercial interest inmonitoring for disease especially during tuber storage as evidenced by premium contracts thatgrowers are paid for later delivery dates in the processed market. This target market applicationis both highly feasible and valuable and will open the technology to other agricultural usesincluding a wide variety of additional crops. Optimizing the timing of delivery of perishableproducts with precision management will better target and limit the costs of remedial inputs tomaintain quality minimize loss and improve sustainability. Success with this post-harvest usecase will open th