A novel concept for designing optical oxygen sensing materials is reported. Oxygen-sensitive anti-Stokes emission is generated via triplet-triplet annihilation-based upconversion and serves as an analytical parameter. Porous glass beads are used to incorporate the "sensing chemistry" including a sensitizer and an annihilator dissolved in a high boiling solvent. The beads are dispersed in silicone rubber or Tefl on AF to produce solid state optodes. Inexpensive low power light sources (LEDs) are used for the excitation. The upconverted emission shows unmatched sensitivity both for the luminescence decay time and for the luminescence intensity. The latter features unusual quadratic Stern-Volmer plots. Much lower sensitivity of the residual NIR luminescence of the sensitizer allows determination of pO 2 in the broad dynamic range from trace oxygen quantities to ≈ 40 kPa. Interrogation of the sensors in frequency domain is demonstrated. Infl uence of the excitation light power on the calibration, temperature effects, dynamic response to altering pO 2 , and photostability of the sensing materials are also investigated.
Most commercially available optical oxygen sensors target the measuring range of 300 to 2 μmol L-1. However these are not suitable for investigating the nanomolar range which is relevant for many important environmental situations. We therefore developed a miniaturized phase fluorimeter based measurement system called the LUMOS (Luminescence Measuring Oxygen Sensor). It consists of a readout device and specialized “sensing chemistry” that relies on commercially available components. The sensor material is based on palladium(II)-5,10,15,20-tetrakis-(2,3,4,5,6-pentafluorphenyl)-porphyrin embedded in a Hyflon AD 60 polymer matrix and has a KSV of 6.25 x 10-3 ppmv-1. The applicable measurement range is from 1000 nM down to a detection limit of 0.5 nM. A second sensor material based on the platinum(II) analogue of the porphyrin is spectrally compatible with the readout device and has a measurement range of 20 μM down to 10 nM. The LUMOS device is a dedicated system optimized for a high signal to noise ratio, but in principle any phase flourimeter can be adapted to act as a readout device for the highly sensitive and robust sensing chemistry. Vise versa, the LUMOS fluorimeter can be used for read out of less sensitive optical oxygen sensors based on the same or similar indicator dyes, for example for monitoring oxygen at physiological conditions. The presented sensor system exhibits lower noise, higher resolution and higher sensitivity than the electrochemical STOX sensor previously used to measure nanomolar oxygen concentrations. Oxygen contamination in common sample containers has been investigated and microbial or enzymatic oxygen consumption at nanomolar concentrations is presented.
This study highlights possible errors in luminescence lifetime measurements when using bright optical oxygen sensors with high excitation light intensities. An analysis of the sensor with a mathematical model shows that high light intensities will cause a depopulation of the ground state of the luminophore, which results in a non-linear behaviour of the luminescence emission light with respect to the excitation light. The effect of this non-linear behaviour on different lifetime determination methods, including phase-fluorometry, is investigated and in good agreement with the output of the model. Furthermore, the consequences of increasingly high light intensities on phase fluorometric lifetime measurements are illustrated for different oxygen sensors based on benzoporphyrin indicators. For the specific case of PdTPTBPF-based sensors an error as high as 50% is possible under high light conditions (0.25 mol m(-2) s(-1) ≈ 50 mW mm(-2)). A threshold of applied excitation light intensity is derived, thus enabling the point at which errors become significant to be estimated. Strategies to further avoid such errors are presented. The model also predicts a similar depopulation of the ground state of the quencher; however, the effect of this process was not seen in lab measurements. Possible explanations for this deviation are discussed.
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