Rosenberg - Euroconference

01.12.1999 - 30.04.2004
Research funding project
The second Euroconference (held in Blarney, Ireland, 2001) was focusing on a very important and dynamic field of Environmental Analytical Chemistry, namely the use of biosensors as indicated already in its subtitle: ¿The use of (bio-)sensors and bioanalytical devices for environmental monitoring¿. Both the presentations of the invited speakers as well as the many excellent contributions from Young Researchers demonstrated that sensors and biosensors are a viable alternative to instrumental analytical techniques that normally require large investments, are often highly time-consuming due to tedious sample preparation procedures and can hardly be performed in the field. Many convincing examples for working systems were presented, as were new concepts with the potential for more selective or more sensitive detection or with a higher degree of integration. Much in line with this was the topic of the third Euroconference (Erperheide, Belgium, 2002) which was held under the motto ¿New Horizons for Environmental Analytical Chemistry Through Miniaturisation and Nanotechnology¿. As it becomes evident that Analytical Chemistry and Information Technology move closer together, it is also obvious that Analytical Chemistry adopts many of the techniques and possibilities that are nowadays already used in the production of microchips and miniaturised devices. Indisputably, both technologies benefit from the possibilities that miniaturisation and nanotechnology bring about, although it must be said that in Analytical Chemistry the advantage of miniaturisation and the possibilities opened up by nanotechnology cannot be exploited yet to the same degree as e.g., in the computer industry. The main difficulty is the interface to the real world which ensures that the small portion of a sample that is analysed is still representative for the significantly larger gross sample that has to be characterised. While for very well characterised and controlled environments (e.g. clinical analysis in the hospital or medical lab) miniaturisation is an enormous advantage due to the potential for parallelisation of analysis and the normally very limited amount of sample available, in environmental analysis the full potential of miniaturisation would only be used in the form of distributed, remote controlled and operated miniaturised analytical devices. Miniaturisation of the analytical device would have the advantage over conventional devices of minimising the reagent and energy consumption (to make the instrument really long-time field deployable) and also to minimise production costs if the device can be produced in all-silicon technology. Although the number of practical examples has been small at the conference (which, to a large part also discussed the characterisation of small structures and samples by microanalytical techniques), it is evident that the potential of such miniaturised measurement devices ¿ be it sensors or complete miniaturised analytical systems ¿ is huge and much will be heard of this field of Analytical Chemistry in the coming years.

People

Project leader

Institute

Grant funds

  • Vereine, Stiftungen, Preise Type of funder Vereine, Stiftungen, Preise Specific program EU-Kommission DG-XII

Keywords

GermanEnglish
Umweltanalytikenvironmental analysis
Umweltchemieenvironmental chemistry
Konferenzserieconference series
Trainingtraining

External partner

  • University of Antwerp
  • University College Cork
  • Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Publications