DiscSPR turns ordinary Blu-ray, DVD, and CD discs into sensor chips. The grooves already built into these discs can help create an SPR signal, which means the expensive nanostructured chip in a traditional sensor can be replaced with something cheap and mass-produced.
Regeneron ISEF Finalist
Lockheed Martin
Water Environment Association of Texas
Office of Naval Research
Stockholm Junior Water Prize
Howmet Aerospace FoundationDiscSPR is a low-cost Surface Plasmon Resonance sensor platform made from commercial optical discs. It uses the disc’s microscopic grooves as the grating needed to read changes in water samples.
Many testing methods depend on expensive equipment, trained operators, and centralized labs.
Optical discs already have precise repeating patterns. After metal coating, those patterns can support SPR sensing.
The sensor showed measurable optical shifts when the surrounding liquid changed.
The goal is to make testing cheap enough so that schools, small labs, and communities could monitor water more often.
Traditional optical sensing tools can be too expensive for routine local monitoring.
Samples often need to be sent away, which slows down decisions and adds extra steps.
A practical sensor should be low-cost, repeatable, and easy to rebuild.
SPR sensors measure how light behaves at a thin metal surface. When the liquid touching that surface changes, the reflected light shifts. DiscSPR uses the grooves in optical discs to help create and read that shift.
The build was kept simple: prepare the disc chip, coat it with metal, place it into a small holder, and pass liquids over the sensing surface while measuring the reflected light.
The disc-based chips produced measurable SPR responses. Silver coatings gave cleaner signals than copper, and front-side illumination worked better than shining light through the disc.
DiscSPR shows that commercial discs can be turned into low-cost SPR chips. To become a practical water-quality device, the platform needs selective chemistry and real-water testing.
1. Add selectivity. Attach receptors that respond to one target pollutant instead of any refractive-index change.
2. Test real samples. Compare tap, lake, and groundwater samples against known concentrations.
3. Shrink the readout. Move from a lab-style optical setup toward a portable version.
These slides show the full project step by step. Click any slide to open it larger.
