Microfluidic optical methods: A review

This chapter reviews the state-of-the-art microfluidic optical methods for water monitoring and analysis. Microfluidics permits to reduce the system dimension, increasing its analytical speed and sensitivity. It also permits to achieve an unprecedented economy of scale, by dramatically increasing production throughput and reducing individual costs. The different linear optical phenomena (e.g., refractive index variations, absorption) and non-linear phenomena (e.g., fluorescence, phosphorescence, Raman scattering) are analysed and discussed in this chapter; in fact, the choice of a particular optical method depends on the analyte and the sensitivity required. Authors show that the strong integration between optics and microfluidics permits to reduce the measurement time, the cost and the portability of the sensing system, opening unprecedented possibilities in the context of water quality monitoring.