Porphyrins based luminescence chemical sensors for monitoring of volatile organic compounds and toxic gases

Altair Center propses to develop and fabricate a miniature, cost-effective fiber optic fluorescence senor array for detection of volatile organic compounds (VOC) and toxic gases. The main detection principle is based on new sensing approach employing thinfilms of molecular aggregates and the effect of energy migration for amplification of the fluorescence reponse signal. In Phase I of this project we studied the luminescence compounds and demonstrated that thin films of porphyrin based aggregates exhibitquite specific signal response to different kinds of target molecules. It has been found that energy migration in the aggregate films provides additional signal amplification due to antenna effect and increases sensitvity to the analyte vapors. These newfings can considerably improve the sensor performance. Since the tested material exhibits high selectivity to the analyte vapors and the proposed new detecting scheme provides the possibilty of simultaneous processing of several parameters, the sensorarray may contain only a few sensing elements. This simplifies the entire system and makes it very cost efficient. In Phase II of the project a prototype sensor system will be designed, assembled, optimized and field tested with final product deliveredto DoD. The inherent flexibilty of the sensor array allows simple reorienting and tuning its sensing functions to different groups of VOC or toxic gases including such important chemical warfare agents as Sarin, Soman and others. The fiber opticalimplementaion of the sensor system is important for remote control the large contaminated areas without any risk for operating personnel. In addition to immediate and real time control of different processes in chemical indusrty and biotechnology.