Correction of 2 Phase Jumps for Silicon Photonic Sensors Based on Mach Zehnder Interferometers with Application in Gas and Biosensing.

Silicon photonic sensors based on Mach Zehnder Interferometers (MZIs) have applications spanning from biological and olfactory sensors to temperature and ultrasound sensors. Although a coherent detection scheme can solve the issues of sensitivity fading and ambiguity in phase direction, the measured phase remains 2π periodic. This implies that the acquisition frequency should ensure a phase shift lower than π between each measurement point to prevent 2π phase jumps.

Silicon photonic olfactory sensor based on an array of 64 biofunctionalized Mach-Zehnder interferometers.

Silicon photonics can address a variety of applications, from datacom and biosensing to lidars. Recently, this technology has been explored for gas sensing. Detection and identification of odors remains a critical challenge in diverse areas such as air quality, food spoilage, or personal well-being.

Surfactant-like Peptide Self-Assembled into Hybrid Nanostructures for Electronic Nose Applications.

An electronic nose (e-nose) utilizes a multisensor array, which relies on the vector contrast of combinatorial responses, to effectively discriminate between volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In recent years, hierarchical structures made of nonbiological materials have been used to achieve the required sensor diversity. With the advent of self-assembling peptides, the ability to tune nanostructuration, surprisingly, has not been exploited for sensor array diversification.

Reliable chiral recognition with an optoelectronic nose.

Chiral discrimination is a key problem in analytical chemistry. It is generally performed using expensive instruments or highly-specific miniaturized sensors. An electronic nose is a bio-inspired instrument capable after training of discriminating a wide variety of analytes.

Improvement of sensitivity of surface plasmon resonance imaging for the gas-phase detection of volatile organic compounds.

The analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is an important issue in various domains. For this, electronic noses (eN) are very promising as novel analytical tools that are portable, inexpensive, and efficient for reliable and rapid analyses. Recently, we have demonstrated that surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRI) is especially interesting for the development of eNs dedicated for gas-phase analysis of VOCs.

Highly-Selective Optoelectronic Nose Based on Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging for Sensing Volatile Organic Compounds.

Monitoring volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is an important issue, but difficult to achieve on a large scale and on the field using conventional analytical methods. Electronic noses (eNs), as promising alternatives, are still compromised by their performances due to the fact that most of them rely on a very limited number of sensors and use databases devoid of kinetic information. To narrow the performance gap between human and electronic noses, we developed a novel optoelectronic nose, which features a large sensor microarray that enables multiplexed monitoring of binding events in real-time with a temporal response.

Covalent assembly and micropatterning of functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes to monolayer-modified Si(111) surfaces.

Multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) covalently bound to monocrystalline p-type Si(111) surfaces have been prepared by attaching soluble amine-functionalized MWNTs onto a preassembled undecanoic acid monolayer using carbodiimide coupling. SEM analysis of these functionalized surfaces shows that the bound MWNTs are parallel to the surface rather than perpendicular. The voltammetric and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy measurements reveal that the electron transfer at the MWNT-modified surface is faster than that observed at a MWNT-free alkyl monolayer.