Abstract

Sensors are currently regarded as the “senses of electronics”: eyes and ears capable of seeing and hearing beyond the human perception; electronic noses and tongues that can recognize odors and flavors without a lifetime training; touches that are able not only to feel the surface physical properties but even to discern its chemical composition. Among the world of chemical sensors, optical devices (sometimes termed “optodes”, from the Greek “the optical way”) have reached a prominent position in those areas where the features of light and of the light-matter interaction prevail. The introduction of optical fibers, low-cost electronics, and integrated optics has added even more value to such sensors. The lecture will take you through a journey from the molecular engineering and realization of bespoke luminescent coordination complexes, to the fabrication and on-site application of fiber-optic chemical sensors to solve current challenges put forward by energy generation industry, aeronautics, water monitoring, and food safety authorities themselves to the UCM Chemical Optosensors & Applied Photochemistry Group (GSOLFA; https://www.gsolfa.info/en/home/).

About the speaker

Guillermo Orellana
Professor at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain)

Bio. Guillermo Orellana, Full Professor of Organic Chemistry and Photochemistry since 2011 at Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) in Spain, received his PhD in Chemistry (1988) from the same University having performed half of the work at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL; Prof. A.M. Braun). Fulbright Post-doctoral Scholar at Columbia University in the City of New York (Prof. N.J. Turro). Visiting Professor at the Free University of Brussels (ULB, 1990). Since 2001, he leads the multidisciplinary UCM Optical Chemosensors & Applied Photochemistry Group (GSOLFA). His current research interests include the development of novel photochemical principles for optical chemosensing, molecular engineering of tailored indicator dyes, biomimetic (nano)materials for molecular recognition, fiber-optic chemical sensors and biosensors, optoelectronic instrumentation for environmental monitoring, (bio)process control, aerospace applications and food analysis, and sensitizer materials for photodynamic disinfection. More than 150 publications and various book chapters on these topics (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4572-6564), together with 20 patents (half of them international), collect Prof. Orellana's basic and applied research. Co-Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier's Sensors & Actuators B: Chem. (2018-2021) and, since 2006, he serves as Chairman of the Permanent Steering Committee of the Europt(r)ode Conference Series (European Conference on Optical Chemical Sensors and Biosensors). Recipient of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry Award for Novel Chemist of the Year (1990) and 1^st Prize of Technology and Knowledge Transfer UCM 2017. Prof. Orellana has also been PI of about 50 research contracts with national and multinational companies..