Integrated Optical Solutions for Ubiquitous Sensing

Ubiquitous chemical sensing aims at exploiting consumer electronic devices as temporary chemical sensing platforms. These devices are a highly disseminated infrastructure, not presently being exploited for chemical sensing purposes. The goal of the ubiquitous chemical sensing field is to create the methodologies and adapted devices to profit from this unexploited resource. DVD drives, flat bed scanners and computer screens used in combination with web cameras, and mobile phones have been demonstrated as measuring platforms, during the past 10 years. In particular the combination of computer screens with web cameras, a technique called the computer screen photo-assisted technique (CSPT), is the most versatile approach to support multiple types of optical detection phenomena, and together with mobile phones are the most ubiquitous type of platforms. The versatility of CSPT comes from the ease with which one can configure a spectrally controlled, 2D micro-positioned, linearly polarized, wide angle and internally modulated illumination with a programmable screen, just by controlling the displayed contents. Concurrently, the imaging devices in CSPT enable one to capture arbitrary assay layouts, the evaluation of which can then be numerically customized. The full exploitation of the CSPT platform requires optically adapted sensing interfaces and specialized methods, in order to increase sensitivity and make use of all available information, for a thorough and complete chemical sensing analysis. In this thesis I have explored the foundations of CSPT sensing on integrated devices, developing methods and sensing’s interfaces that provide enhanced optical detection customized to the CSPT platform