Rujuta D. Munje

The University of Texas at Dallas | UTD · Department of Bioengineering

Wearable electronic monitors hold great promise in helping people to reach their health goals. These increasingly sophisticated devices help the wearers improve their wellness by constantly monitoring their activities and bodily responses. While consumer wearables could be more useful for patients with conditions like diabetes or cardiac problems,...

Rising CO2 gas levels have been shown to have adverse effects on both the environment and our own wellbeing in sufficiently high concentrations. Current monitoring devices utilize high temperature high power devices that do not allow for the further miniaturization for IOT based applications. Other solutions suffer from temperature restrictions or...

In this abstract we demonstrate the implementation of a hybrid aqueous/room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) interface towards the development of a wearable biosensor for detection of inflammation through the use of a diagnostics protein biomarker. RTILs have low vapor pressure and a wide electrochemical window. RTILs are also known to stabilize pro...

This work demonstrates an engineering approach towards modulating the physical and the electrochemical properties of Room Temperature Ionic Liquids (RTILs) to facilitate biosensing in affinity based biosensors. RTILs possess wide electrochemical window and high charge storage capacity making them suitable for electrochemical sensors. The interactio...

There has been a tremendous growth in the field of diagnostic sensors and environmental gas sensors in the past 10 years. The global market for commercial sensors was estimated to be around US $12 billion in 2015. A diagnostic sensor or a biosensor is used for recognition of molecules such as proteins, enzymes, or metabolites from body fluids. Gas...

The effect of incorporating different types of carbon nanotubes into composite films of a redox polymer (FcMe2-C3-LPEI) and glucose oxidase (GOX) was investigated. The composite films were constructed by first forming a high-surface area network film of either single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) or multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) on a glass...

Successful commercialization of wearable diagnostic sensors necessitates stability in detection of analytes over prolonged and continuous exposure to sweat. Challenges are primarily in ensuring target disease specific small analytes (i.e. metabolites, proteins, etc.) stability in complex sweat buffer with varying pH levels and composition over time...

We have demonstrated the detection of stress hormone cortisol from sweat using a flexible biosensing platform. Sweat based detection faces many challenges such as stability of electrodes, sensitivity and specificity. The surface states of zinc oxide (ZnO) can be leveraged for immobilizing various linker molecules for ultra-specific detection of bio...

Next generation CO <sub xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> gas sensors require an enhancement of sensitivity and invariance with regards to CO <sub xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> detection and environmental factors. For this study, we report and discuss the effective application of room temperature ionic liquids...

We have demonstrated the detection of stress hormone Cortisol from sweat using a flexible wearable biosensing platform. Sweat based detection faces many challenges such as stability of electrodes, sensitivity and specificity. The surface states of zinc oxide (ZnO) can be leveraged for immobilizing various linker molecules for ultra-specific detecti...

We demonstrate a wearable, flexible electrochemical biosensor for the combinatorial label-free detection of glucose in human sweat. The novel device comprises of stacked metal/metal-oxide (gold/zinc oxide) thin films within porous polyamide substrates for low-volume ultrasensitive impedance based detection of glucose and cortisol using non-faradaic...

We have developed a label-free, non-faradaic, electrochemical sensor for ultra-sensitive detection of a cardiac biomarker, troponin-T by utilizing the stoichiometric surface compositions of nanotextured zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films. In this study, we show how the performance of a nanotextured zinc oxide based non-faradaic biosensor is modulated by d...

An ultra-sensitive and highly specific electrical double layer (EDL) modulated biosensor, using nanoporous flexible substrates for wearable diagnostics is demonstrated with the detection of the stress biomarker cortisol in synthetic and human sweat. Zinc oxide thin film was used as active region in contact with the liquid i.e. synthetic and human s...

Zinc oxide surface states can be utilized for ultra-specific detection of biomolecules. The major challenges in using ZnO for bio-sensing are attaining enhanced sensitivity and specificity. In this study, we explore the functionalization of zinc in ZnO through utilizing the thiol bond. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the ZnO based...

In this study, we show the modulation to the performance of a nanotextured zinc oxide biosensor by varying the deposition conditions of the metal oxide thin film as well as the choice of cross-linking material used for conjugation of the recognition biomolecule. ZnO surfaces were functionalized using dithiobis succinimidyl propionate and 3-aminopro...

This study demonstrates the development of a zinc oxide (ZnO) based microelectrode sensor for the ultra-sensitive detection of protein biomarkers. Our research focuses on utilizing a materials-based approach to achieve this objective by utilizing ZnO as part of our biosensor for (1) improved surface binding to enhance sensitivity and (2) creating a...