Optical cavity fibre sensor for detection of microcystin-LR in water
R. B. Queirós, S. O. Silva, INESC Porto - Institute for Systems and Computers Engineering of Porto (Portugal); M. G. F. Sales, REQUIMTE/ISEP (Portugal); J. P. Noronha, REQUIMTE/FCT-UNL (Portugal); O. Frazão, P. A. S. Jorge, G. G. Aguilar, INESC Porto - Institute for Systems and Computers Engineering of Porto (Portugal)
The deterioration of water quality by Cyanobacteria causes outbreaks and epidemics associated with harmful diseases in Humans and animals because of the released toxins. Microcystin-LR (mcyst) is one of the most widely studied hepatotoxin and World Health Organization recommends a maximum value of 1 μg L-1 of mcyst in drinking-water. Therefore, there is a great demand for remote, real-time sensing techniques to detect and quantify the presence of mcyst. In this work a Fabry-Perot sensing probe based on a fibre tip coated with a mcyst sensitive thin film is presented. Highly specific recognition membranes, using sol-gel based Molecular Imprinted Polymers (MIPs), were developed to quantify microcystins in water, showing great potential in the analysis of this kind of samples. The fibre Fabry-Pérot MIP sensor shows a linear response to mcyst concentration with a sensitivity of -13.2 ± 0.4 nm L μg-1.
