Optical ammonia gas sensor based on a porous silicon rugate filter coated with polymer-supported dye.

An ammonia gas sensor chip was prepared by coating an electrochemically-etched porous Si rugate filter with a chitosan film that is crosslinked by glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane (GPTMS). The bromothylmol blue (BTB), a pH indicator, was loaded in the film as ammonia-sensing molecules. White light reflected from the porous Si has a narrow bandwidth spectrum with a peak at 610 nm. Monitoring reflective optical intensity at the peak position allows for direct, real-time observation of changes in the concentration of ammonia gas in air samples. The reflective optical intensity decreased linearly with increasing concentrations of ammonia gas over the range of 0-100 ppm. The lowest detection limit was 0.5 ppm for ammonia gas. At optimum conditions, the full response time of the ammonia gas sensor was less than 15s. The sensor chip also exhibited a good long-term stability over 1 year. Therefore, the simple sensor design has potential application in miniaturized optical measurement for online ammonia gas detection.

FTRIFS biosensor based on double layer porous silicon as a LC detector for target molecule screening from complex samples.

Post-column identification of target compounds in complex samples is one of the major tasks in drug screening and discovery. In this work, we demonstrated that double layer porous silicon (PSi) attached with affinity ligand could serve as a sensing element for post-column detection of target molecule by Fourier transformed reflectometric interference spectroscopy (FTRIFS), in which trypsin and its inhibitor were used as the model probe-target system. The double layer porous silicon was prepared by electrical etching with a current density of 500 mA/cm(2), followed by 167 mA/cm(2). Optical measurements indicated that trypsin could infiltrate into the outer porous layer (porosity 83.6%), but was excluded by the bottom layer (porosity 52%). The outer layer, attached with trypsin by standard amino-silane and glutaraldehyde chemistry, could specifically bind with the trypsin inhibitor, acting as a sample channel, while the bottom layer served as a reference signal channel. The binding event between the attached trypsin and trypsin inhibitor samples could be detected by FTRIFS in real-time through monitoring the optical thickness change of the porous silicon layer. The baseline drift caused by sample matrix variation could be effectively eliminated by a signal correction method. Optical signals had a linear relationship with the concentration of trypsin inhibitor in the range of 10-200 ng mL(-1). The FTRIFS biosensor based on double layer porous silicon could be combined with a UV detector for screening the target molecule from complex component mixtures separated by a LC column. Using an LC-UV-FTRIFS system, a fraction containing a trypsin inhibitor could be separated from a soybean extract sample and identified in real-time.