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Advanced Materials and Interfaces for Optoelectronic Sensors

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Physical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2022) | Viewed by 4680

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jost Adam

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Guest Editor

Department of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, University of Southern Denmark, Alsion 2, 6400 Sønderborg, Denmark
Interests: computational and mathematical modelling for photonic materials and structures; sensing; energy conversion; lighting
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Rosaria A. Puglisi

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Guest Editor

Institute for Microelectronics and Microsystems, National Research Council, Strada Ottava 5 Z.I., 95121 Catania, Italy
Interests: silicon; nanostructures; nanotechnologies; silicon based optoelectronic devices; enhanced light–matter interaction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Photonic and optoelectronic sensors constitute integral parts of various fields, including gas sensing, biological sensing, and molecular analysis. These concepts find application in environmental monitoring, food or medicine quality control, safety, and security. For these technologies to be competitive, they must exhibit performant properties in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, throughput, resolution, and reliability. These requirements have in common that they rely on specifically designed transducing elements, comprising structured interfaces made of specifically chosen, functional materials. The success highly depends on the ability to tune and optimize the transducing elements to the desired need. This tuning can be pursued at several levels, from material design to geometrical interface considerations, potentially leading to comprehensive, multiscale approaches. The sensor performance can be fostered by engineering the materials and the nanoscale interface structure, via either bottom–up or top–down approaches. Material engineering includes creating hybrid structures or composite materials, providing the opportunity to tune their electro-optical characteristics. The several degrees of freedom introduced by the combination of 1D to 3D structures (particles, nanowires, gratings, and photonic/plasmonic crystals) further contribute to enhanced light–matter interaction. The combination paves the way to advanced sensing concepts, including plasmonic, surface-resonance, and surface-enhanced methods. Introducing properly designed structures with multi-periodicity or deterministic aperiodicity further creates the opportunity for structure-tailored signal processing, such as multivariate analysis.

We are proud to announce this Special Issue on “Advanced Materials and Interfaces for Optoelectronic Sensors”, aiming at publishing the most relevant work on state-of-the-art materials and structures for optoelectronic sensing. In this Special Issue, we welcome high-quality contributions, such as original research articles, letters, and review articles, covering experimental and theoretical aspects within, but not limited to, the following highlight areas:

Material and device concepts

Particle- and nanowire-based sensors;
Hybrid (chemical/structural) nanostructures for sensing applications;
Metallic/non-metallic nanostructures with sensing functionality;
Nanocomposites (metal oxides and carbon nanostructures);
Plasmonic, surface-resonance, and surface-enhanced sensing concepts;
Coupled microfluidic and optoelectronic sensing approaches;
Advanced, interface-specific signal processing for optical and optoelectronic sensors.

Highlighted application areas

Gas sensing;
Biosensing;
Microfluidic sensing;
SERS

Prof. Dr. Jost Adam
Dr. Rosaria A. Puglisi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

optoelectronic sensors
nanostructures
composites
hybrids
plasmons

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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16 pages, 2519 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Luminescent Silicon Nanowires as Novel Sensor for Environmental Air Quality Control

by Dario Morganti, Maria José Lo Faro, Antonio Alessio Leonardi, Barbara Fazio, Sabrina Conoci and Alessia Irrera

Sensors 2022, 22(22), 8755; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22228755 - 12 Nov 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1703

Abstract

Air quality monitoring is an increasingly debated topic nowadays. The increasing spillage of waste products released into the environment has contributed to the increase in air pollution. Consequently, the production of increasingly performing devices in air monitoring is increasingly in demand. In this scenario, the attention dedicated to workplace safety monitoring has led to the developing and improving of new sensors. Despite technological advancements, sensors based on nanostructured materials are difficult to introduce into the manufacturing flow due to the high costs of the processes and the approaches that are incompatible with the microelectronics industry. The synthesis of a low-cost ultra-thin silicon nanowires (Si NWs)-based sensor is here reported, which allows us the detection of various dangerous gases such as acetone, ethanol, and the ammonia test as a proof of concept in a nitrogen-based mixture. A modified metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE) approach enables to obtain ultra-thin Si NWs by a cost-effective, rapid and industrially compatible process that exhibit an intense light emission at room temperature. All these gases are common substances that we find not only in research or industrial laboratories, but also in our daily life and can pose a serious danger to health, even at small concentrations of a few ppm. The exploitation of the Si NWs optical and electrical properties for the detection of low concentrations of these gases through their photoluminescence and resistance changes will be shown in a nitrogen-based gas mixture. These sensing platforms give fast and reversible responses with both optical and electrical transductions. These high performances and the scalable synthesis of Si NWs could pave the way for market-competitive sensors for ambient air quality monitoring. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Materials and Interfaces for Optoelectronic Sensors)

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Review

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14 pages, 1189 KiB

Open AccessReview

Magneto-Optical Indicator Films: Fabrication, Principles of Operation, Calibration, and Applications

by Lev Dorosinskiy and Sibylle Sievers

Sensors 2023, 23(8), 4048; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s23084048 - 17 Apr 2023

Viewed by 1712

Abstract

Magneto-optical indicator films (MOIFs) are a very useful tool for direct studies of the spatial distribution of magnetic fields and the magnetization processes in magnetic materials and industrial devices such as magnetic sensors, microelectronic components, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), and others. The ease of application and the possibility for direct quantitative measurements in combination with a straightforward calibration approach make them an indispensable tool for a wide spectrum of magnetic measurements. The basic sensor parameters of MOIFs, such as a high spatial resolution down to below 1 μm combined with a large spatial imaging range of up to several cm and a wide dynamic range from 10 μT to over 100 mT, also foster their application in various areas of scientific research and industry. The history of MOIF development totals approximately 30 years, and only recently have the underlying physics been completely described and detailed calibration approaches been developed. The present review first summarizes the history of MOIF development and applications and then presents the recent advances in MOIF measurement techniques, including the theoretical developments and traceable calibration methods. The latter make MOIFs a quantitative tool capable of measuring the complete vectorial value of a stray field. Furthermore, various scientific and industrial application areas of MOIFs are described in detail. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Materials and Interfaces for Optoelectronic Sensors)

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