ABSTRACT
Traditionally, uorescence-based analytical methods were associated with high-cost bulky laboratory equipment. However, a diversity of technological advances taking place over the last 20 years concurred to change this picture. In the eld of optoelectronics, the advent of low-cost blue and UV lasers and LEDs, together with new miniature CCD spectrometers and high-sensitivity avalanche photodiodes (APDs), is enabling a new generation of spectroscopy tools to be developed and deployed in eld applications. On the other hand, chemistry and material sciences are delivering new types of uorescent materials with enhanced sensing properties, such as long-lived metallo-organic complexes or highly photostable quantum dots (QDs). Such developments are expanding the uses of uorescence and enabling new applications such as long-term multiwavelength imaging, ow cytometry analysis in microuidic chips, high-throughput DNA sequencing, and ber-optic-based diagnostic probes.
