I'm trying to make an optical dissolved oxygen sensor. I need help finding an appropriate oxygen sensitive dye

Question

I have been trying to make a dissolved oxygen sensor, the basics are described on this page.

I have a good understanding of the electronics behind this measurement, but I cannot find a suitable oxygen sensitive dye to use. I have read quite a bit about room temperature phosphorescence, and thought that erythrosin b might but a suitable candidate, it has an excitation wavelength of 525 nm, and radiates in near-IR. After more reading, I found that it needs to be in a sol-gel or similiar substrate. All of the reading I've done seems to require some sort of substrate and this isn't what commercial dissolved oxygen sensors are using. They appear as just a thin, hard disc. Additionally, I don't have any equipment or experience with sol-gels.

I'm looking for any information on what chemical and process commercial systems are using. Or, a simple way to get erythrosin b to work. My tests with it so far have not shown any phosphorescence at all.

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

This review article might be useful for your purpose:

Title: Optical methods for sensing and imaging oxygen: materials, spectroscopies and applications Chem. Soc. Rev., 2014, 43, 3666-3761 (DOI: 10.1039/C4CS00039K)

!http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2014/cs/c4cs00039k

This is a review article with 694 references (96 pages). The discussion focused on main sections such as direct spectroscopic sensing of oxygen, absorptiometric and luminescent probes, polymeric matrices and supports, additives and related materials, spectroscopic schemes for read-out and imaging, and sensing formats (e.g., waveguide sensing, sensor arrays, multiple sensors and nanosensors). They also discuss future trends and applications, and concluded it with summary of the properties of the most often used indicator probes and polymers.

There are several probes has been discussed. Some of them may be useful to develop oxygen sensors: Those include: a) Hemoglobin and myoglobin as optical probes for oxygen (the affinity of hemoglobin for oxygen is a function of pH and ionic strength); b) Molecular absorptiometric probes for oxygen (e.g., several cobalt–organic compounds are capable of reversibly binding molecular oxygen); c) Methods based on the oxidative power of oxygen (the reduced or "leuco" form of Methylene Blue (MB) is colorless and quickly converted back to blue MB by oxygen); etc.

PS: Selected irreversibly acting chromogenic probes for oxygen along with respective polymeric supports and color transitions, and Organic fluorescent probes for oxygen were also given in Table 2 & 3, respectively.