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Flexible and Printable food safety sensing

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Food spoilage is as much an economic concern as it is a safety concern for the average consumer, with the USDA reporting billions of dollars' worth of food waste annually. The consequences of consuming spoiled food can be mild to severe. Following our commitment to a grant with the USDA, our research focuses on the monitoring of food spoilage and degradation, specifically with the electrochemicl sensing of food degradation markers. With the future goals of integrating this technology into food packaging in mind, the technology is designed to be flexible, yet study to fit various packaging and handling needs while being as cost efficient as possible for mass production. This project explores the use and fabrication of interdigitated electrodes in the capturing and sensing of food degradation marker. Our current experiments focus on ammonia, which has been proven to be released in high concentration from degrading poultry and fish.