Molecularly Imprinted Polymers and Optical Fiber Sensors for Security Applications

In recent years several approaches to the optical monitoring of Molecularly Imprinted Polymers (MIPs) via optical fibers have been developed with very promising developments in the field of sensing. In this paper, we report about sensing platforms based on MIPs combined with Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) which appear to be useful for security and defense. In particular, two optical chemical sensor configurations for 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) detection in water are reported. These sensor configurations are based on the same Molecularly Imprinted Polymer receptor, but the first one is combined with a Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) platform and the second one with a Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) platform, both realized exploiting D-shaped Plastic Optical Fibers (POFs).