Measure oxygen remotely!

That's right, now you can put an oxygen sensitive thin film patch inside your respirometer, pharmaceutical vial, product package, aquarium or anywhere in-situ and measure the dissolved or gaseous oxygen concentration from a distance.

Phase Fluorimetry is the key

We send a pulse of blue light from an LED through package or resporometer walls to the special RedEye patch. The blue light excites a ruthenium/organic complex thats embedded in an oxygen permeable by hydrophobic sol gel. The rutheniem emmits red light with a decay rate thats related to the amount of oxygen. The more oxygen, the faster the decay. Fast electronics measure the differnce in the phase of the excitation and the fluorescence.


RedEye is very flexible!

Call us for help designing your experiment. We can make respirometers for BOD, COD measurements. We can make respirometers for zooplankton, fish, lizards, plants... you name it!

Stable Calibrations, no membranes, no stirring!
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RedEye's response is not related to intensity, ambient lighting or other confounding experimental problems. The phase shift is only dependent on pO2 and temperature.

If you are using oxygen electrodes, you will love this system. Stirring speed doesn't matter, there are no membranes to foul and there are no membrane solutions to fill. The fiber optic probe is rugged, immune to water, non-electral! You can even do these measurements inside a microwave oven.

Cost Effective!

RedEye patches are inexpensive, and they can be cut to size to meet your needs. One MFPF instrument can be used to measure thousands of RedEye patches. Call us for a detailed quote, demonstartion or help designinmg your experiment. System cost is ~ $5,000 - $6,000 depending on details.

 

 

 

How it Works

The RedEye^TM uses fluorescence quenching of the ruthenium or porphyrin complex to measure the partial pressure of dissolved or gaseous oxygen:

1. The RedEye^TM consists of a sensor coating formulation trapped in a sol-gel matrix, immobilized and protected from the package contents.
2. An optical probe is pointed at the part of the package where the RedEye^TM has been applied. The optical probe is connected to a blue LED and MultiFrequency Phase Fluorometer.
3. A blue LED sends excitation light via the optical probe. The light from the blue LED passes over the RedEye^TM and excites the sensor coating formulation. The excited RedEye^TM fluoresces.
4. If the RedEye^TM encounters an oxygen molecule, the excess energy is transferred to the oxygen molecule in a non-radiative transfer, decreasing or quenching the fluorescence signal. The degree of quenching correlates to the partial pressure of oxygen in the sol-gel matrix, which is in dynamic equilibrium with oxygen in the sample. If oxygen is present, a user can visually observe the RedEye^TM turning pink.
5. The fluorescence is collected by the optical probe and transmitted to the Fluorometer. The fluorescence phase is measured and related to the partial pressure of oxygen through the Stern-Volmer equation.

             

Choose from 3 Oxygen Sensor Coatings

We use high-performance sol gel coatings for our RedEye^TM, while manufacturers of similar products use polymer membranes. Sol gel coatings provide many advantages over polymer membranes such as better thermal and mechanical stability, superior chemical compatibility, ease of production and faster response time. The RedEye^TM can be manufactured with any of our three oxygen sensor coatings.

• The FOSPOR coating uses Pt-porphyrin, a fluorescent dye with high quantum efficiency and low non-specific absorption. A FOSPOR coated RedEye^TM is capable of monitoring low levels of oxygen in gas (to 0.005%) and dissolved oxygen in liquids (to 20 ppb).
• The RedEye^TM with the HIOXY coating formulation is designed to monitor oxygen in non-aqueous vapors and solutions and is ideal for use with oils and alcohols. There is no other oxygen sensor available for packaging that can be used in alcohols.
• The RedEye^TM with the FOXY coating is a good general-purpose solution designed for benign gases, liquids and gels.

 Self-adhesive RedEye for Testing

The RedEye^TM has no minimum and maximum diameter sizes, but typically sizes will vary from a few millimeters to several centimeters. Every order is manufactured per a customer’s specifications. Though the RedEye^TM typically is integrated into a product’s packaging, it can be introduced into a package post-production for R&D purposes as self-adhesive acrylic patches with one of our three coating formulations.

Typical Applications

• Point of care analysis (i.e. disposable oxygen attachments for ventilators used during anesthesia operation)
• Blood bag analysis
• Beverage and food packaging
• Bio process control
• Cell culture monitoring

 RedEye Ordering Information

In addition to the RedEye^TM patch (available in three coating options), we also offer an evaluation kit consisting of a pack of 5 patches in each of the coating options.