Methods and devices for xerogel based sensors

Abstract

Chemical sensors today are deployed in massive volumes across multiple industries and yet at the same time they are subject to substantial research and development effort to establish new, faster, lower cost, more accurate, more sensitive chemical sensors. Such sensors and sensor arrays are being exploited across chemistry, biology, clinical biology, environmental science in civilian and military markets. Amongst the many sensor methodologies are xerogel substrates with two moieties, a receptor for molecular recognition of the analyte and a luminophore for signaling the recognition event. In order to fulfill the requirements for low cost there is a requirement for electronic excitation/read circuits that can support architectures with optical source—N sensors—X filters—M detectors, where M≥N and X=N|M. According to embodiments of the invention electronic excitation/read circuits for phase based luminophore sensors are presented that are compatible with single CMOS chip implementation and monolithic integration of the optical excitation/detection elements.