A Plant-Based Sensor for UV-A Radiation Measurements

The exploitation of a plant-based sensor, able to measure ultraviolet radiation intensity with wavelength of UV-A band (315–400 nm) is here proposed. The approach presented arouses interest in the context of the realization of sensing devices and novel measurement systems green, non-toxic, environmentally friendly, low-cost and disseminable. The working principle is based on the use of natural sensing properties to UV-A radiation of the plant and its metabolic process in order to respond to the received UV intensity. The device is composed of Dimorphotheca ecklonis, which is a particularly sensitive plant to the physical quantity of interest and two implanted electrical contacts to convert, through a chemo-electrical process, the measurand into an output voltage across the electrodes. A suitable experimental setup has been developed and a LabVIEW™ routine has been used for the acquisition of the signal. Experimental results and the characterization of the plant-based sensor show the suitability of the proposed method which is able to work in absence of batteries making the system interesting for several intriguing applications.