Prof. Kinor Jiang, Professor of ITC, recently secured over HK$4 million in funding from the Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) via The Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles (HKRITA) for a project sponsored by the China Resources Research Institute of Science and Technology Company Limited.
The project is titled “Development of Flexible Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (FSERS) System for Food Safety Detection”. At present, conventional food safety detection methods mainly include: gas, liquid, thin-layer and immunoaffinity chromatographies, Raman, fluorescence and infrared spectroscopies, etc. These detection technologies are usually low in efficiency with special requirements, such as expensive equipment and a necessary degree of expertise. Therefore, these technologies are only suitable for professional testing departments. In this project, metal nanoparticles are coated onto the surface of textile materials by using magnetron sputtering, and modified by chemical grafting, to prepare type-specific/ universal flexible surface-enhanced Raman substrates (FSERS). The response of FSERS to different pesticides, and food and restricted additives will be systematically investigated. At the same time, a set of portable Raman instrument will be designed for food safety inspection in combination with the FSERS to form an FSERS detection system, which is an efficient and convenient detection tool for the food safety industry.
