Chemical sensing by simultaneous measurement of photoluminescence intensity and photoluminescence decay time of porous silicon

Abstract Simultaneous measurement of photoluminescence intensity and photoluminescence decay time of porous silicon was used for optical detection of chemical species in gas phase. For the studied set of analytes we observed that quenching of photoluminescence intensity and shortening of photoluminescence decay time scale with the analyte concentration. Simultaneous acquisition of photoluminescence intensity and photoluminescence decay time enabled to improve reliability of the sensor response measurements. Different sensor sensitivity of photoluminescence intensity and decay time to the presence of chemical species makes possible to discriminate between various classes of organic molecules. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)