Abstract
The drug situation in the European Union (EU), esp. Belgium, is very worrying with record numbers of illicit drug seizures and consumption. Current techniques for on-site detection of drugs lack accuracy and sensitivity, while laboratory gold standard techniques are time-consuming and expensive. Electrochemical sensors have great potential, due to their high portability, rapid measurements and affordability. Unfortunately, they nowadays require repeating sub-sampling and manual addition of chemicals. Additional complications include overlap, suppression and shifting of the electrochemical peaks in the presence of adulterants/cutting agents in street samples, giving false negative and positive results. This project aims to develop a novel microfluidic platform for on-site drug detection, that will automatize the sample preparation and analysis procedure, reducing the time of analysis and the risk of human error. The platform will contain four channels with different buffers and derivatizing agents coupled to electrochemical sensors. With the help of chemometric analysis, a very fast (<2 min) and very selective (>95%) simultaneous identification of common drugs in the EU will be enabled in a user-friendly way. This includes cocaine, heroin, ketamine, amphetamine, methamphetamine, and MDMA, in complex mixtures with adulterants/cutting agents and in colored samples. The technology will be validated on real illicit drug samples at customs and police field sites.
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