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Sensors for Medicine and Science,
Inc.® has patented several different
approaches for optical chemical sensing, but current
development efforts focus on fluorescence-based chemical
sensing.
Fundamentally, fluorescence occurs when
(i) incoming light excites an electron in a fluorescent
molecule to a higher energy state, and (ii) the electron
returns to its stable state by releasing energy in the
form of light (see Figure 1).
Two important characteristics of fluorescence
are (i) the light necessary to excite a fluorescent
molecule has a shorter wavelength than that of the fluorescent
emission, and (ii) the fluorescence of a particular
molecule may be suppressed (quenched) or enhanced (dequenched)
by the presence of one or more specific molecules. Consequently,
the presence of such other molecules (called analytes)
may be detected.
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