IIT Madras Builds Low-Cost Chip to Slash Antibiotic Testing Time

Antibiotic resistance — the “silent pandemic” — caused nearly five million deaths worldwide in 2019. At IIT Madras, researchers are tackling this crisis with a chip that can test bacterial resistance in hours instead of days. The device, called ε-µD, can determine whether bacteria resist antibiotics in just three to six hours, compared to the 48–72 hours required by conventional antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST). That time difference could mean the gap between effective treatment and life-threatening complications. How the Chip Works The prototype is about 1.5 cm by 4 cm, built on a glass slide with four carbon electrodes and a soft polymer channel. Patient samples, such as urine, flow into the channel where bacteria attach to the electrodes. After flushing an