Sweet Glow: Nanotube sensor brightens path to glucose detection

Biomedical engineers have developed a new kind of glucose sensor, based on carbon nanotubes, that could free people with diabetes from the daily pinprick tests now required for monitoring blood sugar concentrations.

AT YOUR FINGERTIP. This glucose sensor containing carbon nanotubes fluoresces when the sugar is present. Strano

Michael S. Strano and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign designed the new sensor.