Fiber-optic fluorometer

The sample cells for molecular fluorescence are similar to those for optical molecular absorption. Remote sensing with fiber-optic probes (see Figure 10.30) also can be adapted for use with either a fluorometer or spectrofluorometer. An analyte that is fluorescent can be monitored directly. For analytes that are not fluorescent, a suitable fluorescent probe molecule can be incorporated into the tip of the fiber-optic probe. The analyte s reaction with the probe molecule leads to an increase or decrease in fluorescence. 

Fluorometers designed for research purposes(31) are typically equipped with a xenon arc lamp, monochromators, one or more photomultiplier tubes, cuvet holders, and a computer interface. Some research level fluorometers, such as the Perkin-Elmer LS50, have optional microtiter plate reading accessories with fiber optic bundles. This is convenient since 96-well microtiter plates are commonly used for immunoassay development, and many commercial immunoassays are based on the use of microtiter plates. Fluorometers designed for commercial immunoassay purposes are generally dedicated instruments with few, if any, data acquisition and reduction parameters that can be manipulated by the user. 

In this paper, we employ a new version of our own fiber-optic-based multifrequency phase and modulation fluorometer. 

The parameter can change in a vessel being part of the analytical instrument, for example, an ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometric cell [39,41,45,14,47, 48], an infrared (IR) cell [42, 46], or a fluorometer cell [45, 51], or a polarimetric tube [27, 49]. It can change in a reactor vessel where the analytical signal can be read in some way, for example using an optical fiber cell for spectrophotometry [52-54] or a conductometric cell [16,34,40]. Another possibility is to transport the solution from the reaction vessel to the analytical instrument by a peristaltic pump [38]. When altenative ways are not practicable, samples can be taken at suitable time intervals and analyzed apart [29,31,35,39,43,50]. 

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