The development of "fab-chips" as low-cost, sensitive surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates for analytical applications.

The demand for methods and technologies capable of rapid, inexpensive and continuous monitoring of health status or exposure to environmental pollutants persists. In this work, the development of novel surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) substrates from metal-coated silk fabric, known as zari, presents the potential for SERS substrates to be incorporated into clothing and other textiles for the routine monitoring of important analytes, such as disease biomarkers or environmental pollutants. Characterization of the zari fabric was completed using scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray analysis and Raman spectroscopy.

'Fab-chips': a versatile, fabric-based platform for low-cost, rapid and multiplexed diagnostics.

Low cost and scalable manufacture of lab-on-chip devices for applications such as point-of-care testing is an urgent need. Weaving is presented as a unified, scalable and low-cost platform for the manufacture of fabric chips that can be used to perform such testing. Silk yarns with different properties are first selected, treated with the appropriate reagent solutions, dried and handloom-woven in one step into an integrated fabric chip.