Issues involved in using sol-gel-derived glasses as platforms for chemical sensing

Over the past several years our group has been ex;poring the potential of sol-gel-derived glasses as platforms for advanced sensors and biosensors. In this paper we will outline the challenges that are associated with using these xerogels. Toward this end, we discuss recent results from our laboratories on the performance of polyclonal anti- dansyl antibodies sequestered within a series of xerogels. We assess antibody performance by determining the hapten/antibody association constant, the static excitation and emission for the dansyl hapten bound to the antibody combing site, and the excited-state fluorescence anisotropy and intensity decay kinetics for the dansyl/anti-dansyl system within a series of xerogels.