Casimir–van der Waals 3D-Printed Porous Scaffold Sensors for Selective Ion Detection

PROBLEM: A printed scaffold sensor places binding sites inside a pore network whose narrow throats create strong dispersion-force environments that vary with print fidelity. Two prints with the same nominal pore size can therefore have different throat geometries and different sensor baselines. A sensor design that does not record print geometry alongside chemistry cannot explain why one print discriminates ions and another does not.

SOLUTION: IBM Cloud Ideas would provide a capability for modelling printed scaffold sensors that links print geometry and throat dimensions to DFT binding predictions and Casimir/van der Waals dispersion-force estimates for each pore class. The capability would store the print record, functionalisation record, and isotherm validation together, require reuse accounting, and keep printing and regeneration energy attached to the sensor design. It supports sensor design without asserting selectivity.

EVIDENCE BASIS: Casimir/van der Waals dispersion forces are DOCUMENTED: quantum-fluctuation forces between uncharged surfaces at nanoscale; Casimir measured 1997 (Lamoreaux). DFT (Hohenberg–Kohn 1964, Kohn–Sham 1965, Nobel 1998) predicts which surface groups bind which metal ions. Biosorption is validated via batch isotherms, qe = (C0 − Ce)V/m, with Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms as textbook models. Source: Lamoreaux 1997 Casimir measurement and textbook DFT and biosorption isotherm literature as summarised in the batch method.