Estrogen detection in drinking water by Silicon based light emitters

The immediate and accurate monitoring of chemical and biological substances is essential in environmental analysis for minimizing the health risk for citizens and their exposure to pollutants. Recently, considerable attention has been focused on endocrine-disrupting compounds EDCs, such as estrogens, which constitute a wide group of environmental pollutants, especially in drinking water.
A new concept for measuring the concentration of such organic compounds by using Si-based integrated light sources for fluorescence analysis is presented. In that concept the analyte, estrogen in this example, is labelled with a Fluorescence marker and is immobilized at the passivated surface of the light emitter by receptor molecules. This kind of labelling opens a way to extremely small device dimensions and is of great interest for point-of-care measurements.
The current system has been characterized by FTIR, Raman and electroluminescence measurements.