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Time: 15 July 2024, 9:00 p.m. CEST, 3:00 p.m. ET / 16 July 2024, 3:00 a.m. CST Asia
Webinar ID: 862 6295 5568
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com
It is my honor to serve as the Chair of this session devoted to optical sensing. Chemical sensors based on optical sensing play an ever-growing role for the detection and identification of historical, transient, or emerging events that are industrial, environmental, or biological in origin. These events play key roles in understanding the impact and prognosis of crucial processes in a variety of settings. For this session, three papers from the Special Issue have been selected to highlight industrial, environmental, and biological sensing application areas.
Our first speaker is Nicholas Materer, who investigates the detection of hydrogen peroxide in solutions encountered in industrial settings via a colorimetric method using test strips composed of a titanium (IV) compound of Ti-O-Ti-O-zig-zag chains coordinated to water and hydrogen sulfate ions. The second speaker is James Moulton, who will speak about measuring the turbidity of swellable copolymers of N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPA) to determine pH in ocean and seawater. The response of the NIPA copolymers to pH as a function of ionic strength and temperature of the solution in contact with the polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel membrane containing the NIPA copolymer particles was investigated. Variations in the polymer formulation, including the pH functional comonomer, crosslinker, and lower critical solution temperature modulator, were also investigated to understand their effect on the pH response of the polymer particles. The third speaker, Zeev Rosenzweig, will focus on recent advances in fluorescence bioimaging and sensing with nanoscale luminescent polymer dots (Pdots)—specifically, the use of organic dyes as dopant molecules to modify their optical properties to enable deep-red and near-infrared fluorescence bioimaging applications, as well as to impart the sensitivity of dye-doped Pdots towards selected analytes such as FLAG-tagged FLS2 membrane receptors in genetically engineered plant leaf cells. The fourth speaker is Marcin Ptaszek, who will give a presentation on hydroporphyrin energy-transfer arrays for bioimaging. The wide range of sensing technologies covered in this webinar, including novel analytical methodologies, unique platforms, and improvements in existing methods, are expected to be impactful for the future.


The webinar, Optical Sensing for Chemical and Biological Applications, features recent developments in optical sensing. Four application areas are highlighted: explosive detection in an industrial setting, optical pH sensing in the environment, bioimaging sensing using hydroporphyrin energy-transfer arrays, and the use of nanosized polymer dots for biosensing. These presentations cover a wide range of topics: (1) colorimetric reagents to perform sensitive optical detection using test strips with statistical treatment of the data, (2) swellable and thermosensitive colloidal polymer particles for pH sensing, (3) the development of fluorophores for multicolor imaging, and (4) nanoscale polymers with dopant dyes for tunable emissions and sensing. The width and breadth of the methodology discussed in these talks offer insight into the future of chemical analysis.
Optical Sensing for Chemical Application
Guest Editors: Prof. Dr. Barry K. Lavine, Prof. Dr. Karl Booksh
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2024