(223g) Responsive Complex Emulsions: All-Liquid Sensors for Biomolecules and Environmental Pollutants

Responsive complex emulsions provide a unique sensing platform using the tunable interactions at the liquid-liquid interfaces. In this presentation, we report our progress toward the fabrication and applications of chemical sensors based on complex emulsions for distributed real-time sensors. These dynamic, multicomponent emulsions behave as a natural sensor with reconfigurable morphologies that are extremely sensitive to the chemical environment. Specifically, the unique coupling among their chemical, physical, and optical properties can be leveraged to detect different classes of biomolecules and environmental contaminants. Specifically, our sensors detect the changes in opacity, direction of fluorescent emission, and fluorescent transmission, respectively. The selective recognitions that give rise to changes in the optical properties are governed by functionalized responsive surfactants and interfacial tensions. Furthermore, we will discuss our recent effort to detect a class of emerging contaminants, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). We test the hypothesis that different behaviors at complex interfaces will give rise to the discriminating power necessary to distinguish PFAS from hydrocarbon surfactants. We anticipate that the incorporation of responsive all-liquid materials will provide a cost-effective, easily tunable, and portable alternative to laboratory-based analytical methods for on-site sensing applications.