SENSORS USING MOLECULAR RECOGNITION IN LUMINESCENT, CONDUCTIVE POLYMERS

The purpose of this project is to develop sensor technology for detecting specific heavy metal ions, such as transition metals, lead, lanthanides, and actinides in waste streams. The sensing strategy uses molecular recognition of the metal ions by polymers that change their luminescence and conductivity properties upon metal binding. Research problems that are being addressed by this project include: (1) designing molecular recognition sites that are highly selective for the metal ions of interest in the presence of a large background of other chemical species, (2) finding ways to incorporate many different selective groups into a single polymer, (3) fabricating polymer films, strips, sheets, and coatings that can be applied to other materials, such as fiber optics and surfaces, (4) developing interfaces between the polymers and substrates that can be used to produce prototype arrays of many sensor elements for rapid multi-contaminant detection and quantitation, and (5) developing multiplexed data collection techniques to rapidly process the data obtained from many polymer sensors into a chemical profile of a waste stream or waste site in real time