Recent developments in miniaturized optical systems for continuous fluorescence detection in liquid flows

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in miniaturized optical systems for continuous fluorescence detection in liquids, highlighting current trends, challenges, and the need for further development of autonomous sensing micro-systems.

Contribution

It analyzes recent fluorescence sensing architectures to identify trends and gaps, providing insights into strategies for miniaturization of liquid detection systems.

Findings

Lack of comprehensive miniaturization strategies identified

Current architectures partially fulfill autonomous detection functions

Further research needed for lab-outside micro-system deployment

Abstract

Miniaturization of continuous fluorescence detection is a challenging task due to the multiple and sensitive parameters intervening in the process. By analyzing fluorescence sensing architectures proposed during the last two years, this work has the goal to identify some trends in the process of fluorescence miniaturization for in-time liquid detection. A lack of postulated strategies regarding the miniaturization process was observed and this review tries to answer partially to this need. The identified integration strategies excel in fulfilling partially the desired functions of a fully autonomous miniaturized detector and further research is needed in order to develop sensing micro-system being capable to step outside of the lab world.