ADVANCES IN CHEMICAL SENSORS Edited by Wen Wang Advances in Chemical Sensors Edited by Wen Wang Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka, Croatia Copyright © 2011 InTech All chapters are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. After this work has been published by InTech, authors have the right to republish it, in whole or part, in any publication of which they are the author, and to make other personal use of the work. Any republication, referencing or personal use of the work must explicitly identify the original source. As for readers, this license allows users to download, copy and build upon published chapters even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. Notice Statements and opinions expressed in the chapters are these of the individual contributors and not necessarily those of the editors or publisher. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the published chapters. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any damage or injury to persons or property arising out of the use of any materials, instructions, methods or ideas contained in the book. Publishing Process Manager Ivana Zec Technical Editor Teodora Smiljanic Cover Designer InTech Design Team First published December, 2011 Printed in Croatia A free online edition of this book is available at www.intechopen.com Additional hard copies can be obtained from orders@intechweb.org Advances in Chemical Sensors, Edited by Wen Wang p. cm. ISBN 978-953-307-792-5 free online editions of InTech Books and Journals can be found at www.intechopen.com Contents Preface IX Part 1 Optical Chemical Sensor 1 Chapter 1 Optical Chemical Sensors: Design and Applications 3 Aleksandra Lobnik, Matejka Turel and Špela Korent Urek Chapter 2 Optical Sensors Based on Opal Film and Silica Nanoparticles Modified with a Functional Dye 29 Ivan Boldov, Natalia Orlova, Irina Kargapolova, Alexandr Kuchyanov, Vladimir Shelkovnikov and Alexandr Plekhanov Chapter 3 Some Methods for Improving the Reliability of Optical Porous Silicon Sensors 47 Tanya Hutter and Shlomo Ruschin Chapter 4 Optochemical Sensor Systems for In-Vivo Continuous Monitoring of Blood Gases in Adipose Tissue and in Vital Organs 63 Merima Čajlaković, Alessandro Bizzarri, Gijs H. Goossens, Igor Knez, Michael Suppan, Ismar Ovčina and Volker Ribitsch Chapter 5 Chemical Sensors Based on Photonic Structures 89 Vittorio M. N. Passaro, Benedetto Troia, Mario La Notte and Francesco De Leonardis Chapter 6 Coumarin-Derived Fluorescent Chemosensors 121 Hongqi Li, Li Cai and Zhen Chen Part 2 Chemical Sensor with Nanostructure 151 Chapter 7 Surface-Functionalized Porous Silicon Wafers: Synthesis and Applications 153 Fahlman Bradley D. and Arturo Ramírez-Porras VI Contents Chapter 8 Improvement of the Gas Sensing Properties in Nanostructured Gd 0.9 Sr 0.1 CoO 3 169 Carlos R. Michel, Narda L. López Contreras, Edgar R. López-Mena, Juan Carlos Ibarra, Arturo Chávez-Chávez and Mauricio Ortiz-Gutiérrez Chapter 9 Survey of the Application Nanoscale Material in Chemical Sensors 189 Mahboubeh Masrournia and Zahra Ahmadabadi Part 3 Electrical Chemical Sensor 213 Chapter 10 Polymer Thin Film Chemical Sensors 215 Renat Salikhov and Aleksey Lachinov Chapter 11 Photo-Assisted Organic Pollutants Sensing by a Wide Gap pn Heterojunction 235 Yoshinobu Nakamura, Yusuke Morita, Yui Ishikura, Hidenori Takagi and Satoru Fujitsu Part 4 Artificial Chemical Sensor 255 Chapter 12 Inspiration from Nature: Insights from Crustacean Chemical Sensors Can Lead to Successful Design of Artificial Chemical Sensors 257 Kristina S. Mead Part 5 Sensor Technology 277 Chapter 13 Physical Vapour Deposition Techniques for Producing Advanced Organic Chemical Sensors 279 Michele Tonezzer and Gianluigi Maggioni Chapter 14 Drift Correction Methods for Gas Chemical Sensors in Artificial Olfaction Systems: Techniques and Challenges 305 S. Di Carlo and M. Falasconi Chapter 15 Statistical Analysis of Chemical Sensor Data 327 Jeffrey C. Miecznikowski and Kimberly F. Sellers Preface With decades of vigorous research and development, various chemical sensors with excellent performance have been used successfully in areas such as clinical, environmental conservation and monitoring, disaster and disease prevention, and industrial analysis. A chemical sensor is an analyzer that responds to a particular analyte in a selective and reversible way, and transforms chemical information, ranging from the concentration of a specific sample component to total composition analysis, into an analytically useful signal. The chemical information mentioned above may originate from a chemical reaction by a biomaterial, chemical compound or a combination of both attached onto the surface of a physical transducer toward the analyte. Numerous literatures deal with the sophisticated research on chemical sensors by considering the sensor structure, techniques and response mechanism, and leading to quick response, low cost, small size, superior sensitivity, good reversibility and selectivity, and excellent detection limit. Hence, such kind of chemical sensor meets the requirement of practical application. This book is an attempt to highlight current research advances in chemical sensors on the topics of health, environment, and industry analysis. It is composed of 15 chapters and divided into 5 sections according to the classification following the principles of signal transducer. The current trends, materials design, and principle of detection and monitoring in chemical sensor are introduced in details. Section 1 provides an introduction to optical chemical sensors, and descriptions on the analytical aspects of sensors. Some of the latest research progress regarding the sensor structure and response mechanism is discussed in this section. Section 2 reviews some research achievements of chemical sensor based nanostructure. Section 3 describes the electrical chemical sensor by utilizing conductive and oxide semiconductor materials, and Section 4 performs the chemical sensor trend relating to the artificial chemical sensor. Sensor technologies related to sensor performance improvement by utilizing physical vapor deposition techniques, statistical analysis of the chemical sensor data, and drift correction methods are discussed in Section 5. It is my pleasure that this collection of up-to-date information and latest research progress on chemical sensor in this book will be of great interest to all those working on chemical sensors. X Preface I would like to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of all the contributing authors. In particular, I would like to thank Ms. Ivana Zec, the publishing process manager of this book, for her great help in proposal collection, evaluation and manuscript editing. Wang Wen, Ph.D. Professor Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing, China, P. R. [...]... biosensing, etc.) and various applications (sensing gases, vapours, humidity, pH, ions, organic chemicals, certain bacteria, DNA, etc in medical and chemical analyses, molecular biotechnology, marine 12 Advances in Chemical Sensors and environmental analysis, industrial production monitoring, bioprocess control, automotive industry) have been published in recent years The most comprehensive studies include... accuracy of luminescence intensity-based schemes are greatly affected by fluctuations in the light-source’s intensity, detector sensitivity, inner filter effects, indicator concentration (bleaching and leaching), sample turbidity, and sensing layer thickness However, some of these problems can be minimized or even overcome by measuring luminescence lifetimes instead of intensities But again, lifetime... found in the body is bound to proteins such as carbonic anhydrase or zinc finger proteins Zinc has been implicated in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease (Cuajungco & Lees, 1997; Frederickson et al., 2000) and as a neuromodulator (Choi & Koh, 1998) Since the full extent of zinc’s purpose in the body remains unclear, the development of nanosensors is needed to further elucidate the role of zinc in vivo... bonding – the indicator is covalently bonded to the polymer matrix This may be achieved by a) choosing the indicator that contains a functional group for covalent bonding to the polymer, which is at the same time insensitive for the target analyte, or b) polymerizing the indicator to certain monomers to form a copolymer (Baldini et al., 2006; Lobnik et al., 1998) Doping – the indicator is entrapped in. .. factors such as matrix, indicator and immobilization technique are still indispensable tools in achieving the desired sensor’s characteristics 22 Advances in Chemical Sensors However, as more and more types of smart nanomaterials with unique and tunable properties continue to be invented, increasing numbers of efficient and selective NSs are expected to emerge Sensors capable of detecting very low analyte... sensing nucleic acids (Ai Cheng, 2007), and nanowires were used for Hg2+ (Tsao-Yen, 2011) 2.1.2 Luminescent indicators The analyte concentration is determined by the change in the emission properties of a luminophore Luminescence is intrinsically more sensitive than absorption as a sensing technique, so for many applications the literature more often reports on sensing with luminescent probes and sensors. .. 2008) • • In the intrinsic type of FOCs, the sensing principle is based on the change in lighttransmission characteristics due to the change occurring in a fiber property (e.g., refractive index or length) upon the interaction with the analyte or the system being studied The optical fibre itself has sensory characteristics This type of sensor is mainly applied to measure physical or physicochemical... which enables remote sensing In addition to advantages in terms of cheapness, ease of miniaturization, obtaining safe, small, lightweight, compact and inexpensive sensing systems, a wide variety of sensor designs are possible (Jerónimo et al., 2007; Lukowiak & Strek, 2009; Seitz, 1988) The most common classification of FOCs distinguishes between the intrinsic and extrinsic types of sensors (Seitz, 1988;... analytes In particular, a determination of the dissolved oxygen is of utmost importance in many fields of science and technology (Papkovsky & O’Riordan, 2005), including biotechnology (Kostov et al., 2001), biology (Schmaelzlin et al., 2005), marine science (Schroeder et al., 2007), and in medicine (Kimura et al., 2007) Recent interest in methods for measuring dissolved oxygen has been focused mainly on... optical sensors, due to their advantages over conventional amperometric electrodes in that they are faster and do not consume oxygen (McDonagh et al., 2002) The principle behind the operation of these sensors is the reduction in the luminescent intensity as a consequence of the oxygen quenching of the emitting state The sensor optode, Optical Chemical Sensors: Design and Applications 17 either in typical . FOCs distinguishes between the intrinsic and extrinsic types of sensors (Seitz, 1988; Wolfbeis, 2008). • In the intrinsic type of FOCs, the sensing principle is based on the change in light- transmission. ADVANCES IN CHEMICAL SENSORS Edited by Wen Wang Advances in Chemical Sensors Edited by Wen Wang Published by InTech Janeza Trdine 9, 51000 Rijeka,. Mechanical Engineering, 2 Institute for Environmental Protection and Sensors, Slovenia 1. Introduction Optical sensors, or opt(r)odes, represent a group of chemical sensors in which electromagnetic