Development of a fully integrated Lab-o-a-Chip for amphetamine detection in sewage

The work in this thesis is devoted to the development of an autarkic device for real-time monitoring of amphetamines in sewage. It has been developed within the EU project Micromole to help Law Enforcement Agents (LEA) to solve forensic scenarios related to the production of amphetamines and amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS). It is composed of three main sections. The first section is devoted to the development of two generation of potentiometric sensors for the detection of amphetamines using first, the commercial ionophore dibenzo-18-crown-6 ether, then the synthesized ion-pair complex [amphetamine-H]+[3,3’-Co(1,2-C2B9H11)2]- as active sites for amphetamine recognition. The second section is dedicated to the fabrication of a passive microfluidic system integrated into a Lab-on-a-Chip to protect the sensor from the harsh environment through the control of the sample amount reaching the sensor. For this purpose, the microfluidic system formed a combination of passive micromixers, microfilters and microchannels. The final section was devoted to the development of an autarkic sample storage unit to help LEA to store spontaneous samples during forensic investigations related to the clandestine production of amphetamines in illegal laboratories