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-Perot MIP sensor shows a linear response to mcyst concentration with a sensitivity of -13.2 ±} 0.4 nm L μg^-1.

Date Published: 8 September 2010
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 7653, Fourth European Workshop on Optical Fibre Sensors, 76531N (8 September 2010); doi: 10.1117/12.865004

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7653:
Fourth European Workshop on Optical Fibre Sensors
José Luís Santos; Brian Culshaw; José Miguel López-Higuera; William N. MacPherson, Editor(s)