Towards selective optochemical gas sensing by luminescent marine diatoms

Diatom frustules are nanostructured silica shells that spontaneously arise in every aquatic environment. They strongly emit in the visible range when pumped up by UV radiation and their photoluminescence, in virtue of their high surface-to-volume ratio, is strongly affected by changes of the surrounding atmosphere. Frustules belonging to different families were exposed to various chemical species in order to test their reactivity to different polluting gases. Different species of diatoms were found to exhibit different relative responses and different gas concentration ranges of sensitivity, depending on the morphology and porosity of their frustules. Due to the large variety of dimensions, porosities and surface morphologies available in nature, these materials appear to be promising to improve the selectivity of gas sensing based on photoluminescence optochemical transduction, opening the way to the implementation of an all-optical analogous of the electronic nose.