SENSING VIA LUMINESCENCE

Luminescence of any substance is strongly affected by quenchers such as temperature, pressure or presence of different chemicals. Luminescence changes its appearance with quenchers’ variations and, generally, lessens in intensity with quencher increase until it eventually vanishes. Changes of quenchers can modify one or many features of luminescence, such as intensities of emission bands, shapes of emission spectra, or emission decays, producing a rich set of phenomena. Many of these can be exploited for sensing; they can serve as principles of measurement if the physics behind them is understood and correctly interpreted. The progress in the development of materials for luminescent sensing is critical for the breakthrough in the sensing filed.

LUMINESCENCE THERMOMETRY FOR TEMPERATURE SENSING

Group for Optical Materials and Spectroscopy – OMAS focus on the lanthanide- and transition metal-doped phosphors to develop luminescent probes of high brightness that are able to provide routine temperature measurements with either temperature (<0.1 K), spatial (<1 μm) and/or temporal (<1 ms) resolutions. Also, hybrid luminescent materials (combination of lanthanide and transition metal activated phosphors) and materials whose emission is activated by more than one type of luminescence centre are investigated. Assessment of luminescent thermometry capabilities of the probes is done in terms of absolute and relative thermal sensitivity, spatial and temporal resolution, uncertainty, repeatability and reproducibility of temperature readout.

LUMINESCENCE FOR CHEMICAL SENSING

Group for Optical Materials and Spectroscopy – OMAS focus on the lanthanide doped phosphors to develop luminescent probes for chemical sensing of different pesticides, fertilizers and heavy metal ions. Assessment of chemical sensing capabilities of the luminescent probes is done in terms of sensitivity, selectivity, limit of detection and quantitation, and reusability.