NEW SENSING PRINCIPLES FOR ION DETECTION

Public and private bodies responsible for public hygiene and health an d all sectors of industry, require accurate, reproducible, stable and low cost ion sensors. The currently used sensing technologies (potenti ometric ion selective electrodes and voltammetric assay techniques on a mercury electrode) do not satisfy the existing need for real-time mo nitoring of water quality and industrial effluents on a large scale. A lso unsatisfied remains the need for real-time assays of blood electro lytes at the point of care. These challenges explain the further searc h for new scientific and technical solutions in the field of ion senso rs. Recently we have developed two novel techniques for ion detection in aqueous solutions: (i) ion-selective conductometric microsensors; ( ii) ion-selective voltammetric electrodes.