Optical chemical and biochemical sensors: new trends (invited paper)

Chemical and biochemical sensing is under the extensive research all over the world and many chemical and biochemical sensors are finding increasing number of applications in industry, environmental monitoring, medicine, biomedicine and chemical analysis. This is evidenced by each-year-growing number of international scientific conferences, in which advances in the field of the sensors are reported. One of the main reason why only a few sensors reach the international market, notwithstanding the high number of laboratory prototype described in many peer reviewed papers, lies in the fact that a biochemical sensor is a highly interdisciplinary "object" the realization of which requires the team work of scientists coming from different areas such as chemistry, physics, optoelectronics, engineering, biochemistry, and medicine. And this peculiarity is not easily found in the research teams. In the present paper, the fundamental bases of chemical and biochemical optical sensing are summarised and the new trends are described.