“Hydrophobic Chalcogenide Fibers for Cell-based Bio-optical Sensors”
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Due to heavy component atoms, chalcogenide glasses undergo low phonon vibrations and are therefore transparent over a wide range of infrared radiation. They also exhibit good chemical durability, notably toward water and show a good resistance to devitrification, which allow them to be processed into fibers. It is then possible to use these fibers to send and collect an infrared signal from a sample and perform FTIR spectroscopy remotely.

Chalcogenide fibers are shown to exhibit a hydrophobic surface behavior which results in detection enhancement of organic species in aqueous solutions. We use these fibers to monitor the infrared signature of human lung cells and detect the presence of toxic agents in the cell surrounding media. The signal is collected using a fiber evanescent wave spectroscopy set up with live human cells acting as a sensitizer for detection of minute quantities of toxicant. Several aspects of these IR fiber sensors will be discussed, such as the spectroscopic characteristics of the fiber, their toxicity and new design for the sensing zone.