Optical Sensing of Water Contaminants Using Organic Semiconductors

Global water quality is becoming more and more insecure due to a wide variety of factors including climate change and pollution from multiple sources. Current methods of water quality monitoring are slow, expensive, and infrequent. There is a lack of sensors for specific contaminants including pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and explosives in aquatic environments. In this work we describe a thin-film optical sensor based on a flexible organic semiconducting polymer with a waterproofing coating which can detect these classes of contaminant, with initial quenching efficiency results of sensing the insecticide thiamethoxam, and fungicide fluopyram.