Focus
Rosy Prospects for the Analytical Instrument Industry Under President Ronald Reagan, U.S. government policy is currently favoring moderate economic growth, a return to free markets whenever possible, and low inflation. These factors augur well for most industries in the U.S. and, hence, for the analytical instrument industry as well, according to Stan Feldman, vice-president of Data Resources Inc., who spoke at the SAMA Financial Conference for the Analytical Instruments Industry (see previous story). "The notion has been that the large [U.S. federal budget] deficit will either create hyperinflation or that it will limit economic growth. Neither will happen," said Feldman, in part because a significant amount of the deficit is being "financed" by a healthy, strong dollar. With a low inflation rate in place, the U.S. government has been able to move toward a less restrictive monetary policy. This, in turn, is stimulating moderate economic growth, partly due to the lower interest rates (and consequent increased investment spending) that result when there is more money floating around in the economy. The analytical instrument industry benefits when capital equipment spending is high. As it happens, capital equipment investment spending as a percentage of gross national product (GNP)—with all amounts corrected for inflation—has been increasing significantly since about 1979, said Feldman. "I wouldn't call it a capital boom," he said, "but historically, relative to the 1970s, the percent of GNP allocated to equipment investment has been increasing." There are several reasons for this, including the increased cost competitiveness of world markets, which induces companies to increase their investment in equipment—including modern, computerized analytical instrumentation—that can help improve efficiency and productivity. Another major driver for the analytical instrument industry is research and development (R&D) spending. In the private sector of the economy, said Feldman, R&D spending as a percentage of before-tax corporate profits has more than doubled since 1978. This trend is corroborated in Battelle Memorial Institute's 1985 R&D forecast (released in January 1985), which concludes that real (inflation-
corrected) industrial support of R&D has increased at an average annual rate of 5.4% during the past decade and that it will account for about 51% of total R&D funding in 1985. The remainder of the funding is supplied by the federal government (about 45%), academic institutions (2%), and nonprofit organizations (1%). Until 1979 the federal government supported more R&D than did industry; thus, the trend toward increasing industrial support appears to be continuing. The Battelle study predicts that the military share of federal R&D spending will rise from about 62% in 1984 to over 66% in 1985. "The share of the total output going to the military has increased dramatically," said Feldman at the SAMA meeting. "That's another driver for the analytical instrument
industry. By 1986, the military will purchase about half of the output of engineering and scientific instruments." Another factor behind Feldman's rosy forecast involves the effect of recent government regulations on hospitals and, hence, on clinical chemistry instrumentation. "The hospitals will soon be under a ceiling as to how much Medicare money goes to patient medical services," Feldman explained. "Instead of hospitals just submitting bills and the government paying them, now there will be limits. The hospitals are thus under cost constraints, and there is a move on to become more productive, which means they will lay off people. How do you become more efficient? You substitute capital equipment for people. So we will be selling equipment for the hospital service industry that will allow it to be more efficient and more productive." Speaking again of the analytical instrument industry as a whole, Feldman concluded that "the overall economy is going to help this industry, and the performance of the economy is likely to be much less variable between now and 1990 than ever before. Most markets that use analytical instruments are growing fast and have good prospects." S.A.B.
CHEMFETs Available at Production Cost Chemically sensitive field effect transistors, or CHEMFETs, will soon be available at production cost to academic and industrial chemists for research purposes. According to Jiri Janata, chairman of the University of Utah's Department of Bioengineering, the solidstate chemical sensors will be manufactured at the Hedco Microelectronics Laboratory, a $10-million facility in the university's Department of Electrical Engineering, and distributed to scientists in hopes of stimulating interest in novel uses for the devices. "We know of no other places that supply these devices," Janata notes. "The Hedco lab has the capacity and expertise to do so. We cannot recommend that the CHEMFETs be used
400 A · ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 57, NO. 3, MARCH 1985
for human experiments, but the devices should enable people to build a research base on which eventual human use will follow." A CHEMFET consists of a conventional insulated-gate field effect transistor whose metallic gate contact has been replaced by a chemically sensitive coating and a reference electrode. CHEMFETs can be used in a wide variety of ways, as reported recently in A N A L Y T I C A L C H E M I S T R Y (i).
Nu-
merous cations and anions in solution can be sensed by coating the gate region with an ion-sensitive membrane. These ion-sensitive CHEMFETs (or ISFETs) have been used to detect H+, K+, Ca 2 + , CI", I", and CN~ with near Nernstian response. A very sensitive hydrogen gas sen-
Focus sor is obtained if the gate is coated with a thin film of palladium—a de tection limit of less than 1 ppm of H2 is possible. Detection of other gases, such as H 2 S, NH3, and CO, has also been reported. The small size and low output im pedance of the CHEMFET make it ideal for in vivo monitoring and analy sis of small sample volumes. Janata and his co-workers at the University of Utah are developing devices that will detect accumulations of trace heavy metals, such as lead and cadmi um, in the body. According to Janata, the electrochemical approach to ana lyzing trace heavy metals is more sen sitive and accurate than the currently used optical techniques. The simplici ty of the CHEMFET would also allow it to be used in physicians' offices rather than in remote laboratories. Janata and his group are also inves tigating enzymatic coatings for the sensors. ENFETs (enzymatic field ef fect transistors) could be used to mon itor enzymatic reactions. The small size of the CHEMFET is particularly important if expensive enzymes are to be used in the device. "There are some 1500 different en
zymes that could be used," explains Janata. "So it's a matter of putting an enzyme on a transistor that is sensi tive to a particular species for which that enzyme is the catalyst." Many in dustrial processes, especially those in biotechnology, require careful moni toring of reactions, and the probes would be suitable for these. The small size of the CHEMFET enables multiple sensors to be placed on the probe tips, allowing simulta neous monitoring of many different compounds. Such multisensors would be especially useful to biomedical re searchers, but Janata points out that they may also find applications in such diverse fields as agriculture, mineral resource exploitation, and ef fluent monitoring. The main technological problem that has prevented wide-scale use of CHEMFETs is the difficulty of prop erly encapsulating the device (2). Microsensors are routinely exposed to media that are incompatible with the CHEMFET's solid-state electronic circuitry. Instability can result if even a trace of moisture or ionic contami nant penetrates the encapsulation coating of a CHEMFET.
According to Janata, "The bulk of the problems that remain are in the area of materials science, not in solidstate electronics or chemistry." He hopes to find a partner in industry in terested in refining the encapsulation and packaging techniques that protect the sensor and its electronic compo nents from inherently hostile environ ments. The University of Utah lab will build the basic chips, up to and in cluding the solid-state electronics, but researchers who purchase the sensors will have to coat the probe with the desired chemically selective mem brane and encapsulate it themselves. Cost feasibility of the project is based on providing 50,000 chips per year— the cost of the probes will depend somewhat on the number of requests received. For further information, contact Jiri Janata, Dept. of Bioengineering, Uni versity of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, 801-581-3837.
Reference (1) Wohltjen, H. Anal. Chem. 1984,56, 87-103 A. M.D.W.
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