Novel Nanomaterials for Use in Optical Chemical Sensors and Biosensors

Prof. Otto S. Wolfbeis
Institute of Analytical Chemistry, Chemo- and Biosensors,
University of Regensburg, 93040 Regensburg, Germany
www.wolfbeis.de

The talk will cover new kinds of nanomaterials with unusual optical properties, and how they can be applied to (optically) sense chemical and biochemical analytes. Examples will be given for nanosized particles for intracellular sensing of oxygen and pH, for lanthanide-based upconversion nanoparticles (that can convert near-IR light into visible light), on carbon nanodots (4 nm in diameter) that can be used for purposes of imaging, and on photonic crystals based on the use of particles of a size between 5 µm to a few hundred nm that enable new schemes for label-free sensing. Aside from chemical sensing at a single point and inside cells, it will be shown how such materials, in the form of sensor layers, can be applied to sensing/imaging of species such as oxygen, pH, CO2, glucose and even temperature over large areas, some even in parallel.

Biography:

Otto S. Wolfbeis (1947) is a Professor of Analytical and Interface Chemistry at the University of Regensburg. His research focuses on optical (fiber) chemical sensors, fluorescence spectroscopy, fluorescent probes and labels, and on luminescent nanomaterials. He has authored >500 articles and reviews that have been cited >13,000 times, and his Hirsch index is between 57 and 61. He has edited a book on Fiber Optic Chemical Sensors and Biosensors, was the Founding Editor of the Springer Series on Fluorescence and the Springer Series on Chemical Sensors and Biosensors, is the Editor-in-Chief of Microchim. Acta, and one of the ten curators of Angewandte Chemie.  Several sensors developed in his group have been commercialized (www.presens.de). Also see: www.wolfbeis.de.