Bio-sensing devices

The optical identification of bioaerosols in the atmosphere and its discrimination against combustion related particles is a major issue for real-time, field compatible instruments.

Our recent work is focused on embedding advanced pump-probe depletion spectroscopy schemes in a portable instrumen to discriminate amino acid containing airborne particles (bacteria, humic particles, etc.) from poly-cyclic aromatic hydrocarbon containing combustion particles (Diesel droplets, soot, vehicle exhausts) with high selectivity.

Our real-time, multi-modal device provides, in addition to the pump-probe depletion information, fluorescence spectra (over 32 channels), fluorescence lifetime and Mie scattering patterns of each individually flowing particle in the probed air. We have also successfully transferred a similar scheme to liquids, demonstrated the detection of bacteria in flowing water for real-time pollution monitoring applications.

Further reading

Discriminating Bio-aerosols from Non-Bio-aerosols in Real-Time by Pump-Probe Spectroscopy, G. Sousa, G. Gaulier, L. Bonacina and J.-P. Wolf Scientific Reports 6, 33157, (2016) [DOI: 10.1038/srep33157]

Real-time monitoring of bacterial and organic pollution in a water stream by fluorescence depletion spectroscopy, G. Gaulier, D. Staedler, G. Sousa, L. Bonacina, and J.-P. Wolf, Applied Physics B, 123:55 (2017) [DOI: 10.1007/s00340-016-6634-2]

Assessing the Dynamics of Organic Aerosols over the North Atlantic Ocean, J. Kasparian, C. Hassler, B. Ibelings, N. Berti, S. Bigorre, V. Djambazova, E. Gascon-Diez, G. Giuliani, R. Houlmann, D. Kiselev, P. de Laborie, Anh-Dao Le, T. Magouroux, T. Neri, D. Palomino, S. Pfändler, N. Ray, G. Sousa, D. Staedler, F. Tettamanti, J.-P. Wolf and M. Beniston, Scientific Reports, 7, 45476 (2017) [DOI: 10.1038/srep45476]