Professory Anthony Dichiara stands in a lab setting. He's wearing a purple shirt and safety googles, and is holding out a piece of his "smart paper."
Mark Stone/University of Washington
Anthony Dichiara, a University of Washington professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, holds a piece of “smart” paper created in his lab.

In cities and large-scale manufacturing plants, a water leak in a complicated network of pipes can take tremendous time and effort to detect. Nearly a quarter-million water line breaks occur each year in the U.S., which costs public water utilities about $2.8 billion annually, according to the American Water Works Association.

A University of Washington team wants to simplify the process for discovering detrimental leaks by developing “smart” paper that can sense the presence of water. The paper, laced with conductive nanomaterials, can be employed as a switch, turning on or off an LED light or an alarm system indicating the absence or presence of water. The researchers described their discovery in a paper appearing in the November issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.

“Water sensing is very challenging to do due to the polar nature of water, and what is used now is very expensive and not practical to implement,” said lead author Anthony Dichiara, a UW assistant professor of bioresource science and engineering in the School of Environment and Forest Sciences. “That led to the reason to pursue this work.”

Read more at UW Today »