The fabrication of a biodegradable and fluorescent cylindrical waveguide with doped hybrid nanoparticles (silica–carbon nanodots) is reported. The fluorescent hybrids were obtained by coupling amino-functionalized fumed silica nanoparticles with the carboxylic acid surface groups of amorphous carbon nanodots obtained from the thermolysis of citric acid. The hybrid nanoparticles present diameters lower than 10 nm, maximum fluorescence at 465 nm, and excitation-wavelength-dependent behavior. They were occluded into an agarose matrix, providing a low-cost and easily scalable sensor capable of detecting pH variations with maximum sensitivity of 5.61 nm/(pH unit) when excited by a 403 nm UV light-emitting diode (LED).

This research presents a microfermentor integrated into an optical fiber sensor based on quasi-elastic light scattering (QELS) to monitor and swiftly identify cellular growth kinetic parameters. The system uses a 1310 nm laser light that is guided through single-mode silica optical fibers to the interior of perfusion chambers, which are separated by polycarbonate membranes (470 nm pores) from microchannels, where a culture medium flows in a constant concentration. The system contains four layers, a superior and an inferior layer made of glass, and two intermediate poly(dimethylsiloxane) layers that contain the microchannels and the perfusion chambers, forming a reversible microfluidic device that requires only the sealing of the fibers to the inferior glass cover. The QELS autocorrelation decay rates of the optical signals were correlated to the cells counting in a microscope, and the application of this microsystem to the monitoring of alcoholic fermentation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae resulted in the kinetic parameters of K_M = 4.1 g/L and μ_m = 0.49 h⁻¹. These results agree with both the data reported in the literature and with the control batch test, showing that it is a reliable and efficient biological monitoring system.

Important properties in cementitious materials, such as concrete, are related to the presence of additives that influence the rigidity and the physical and chemical resistances. For the evaluation of the additive effectiveness, known as pozzolanic activity, a simple procedure, the Chapelle test, is commonly used, and it essentially consists in a reaction between the additive with calcium oxide in aqueous medium. However, such procedure presents limitations in terms of processing time and lack of information regarding the reactions kinetics. In this sense, a simple method based on the kinetic and thermodynamic principles of chemical reactions is proposed, which can be performed using conventional electronic pH sensors. The study provides an alternative methodology with many advantages over the traditional procedure, such as energy and time-savings, more robustness and more confidence. In this paper, three types of silica nanoparticles that can be used as low-cost additives were characterized in relation to their morphology and crystallinity by XRD and SEM, the particles average diameters were obtained and the particles were used for studying the chemical process that takes place during the Chapelle test. Results and the semi-empirical analysis provided strong evidence that the process is an acid-base 1:1 reaction and it was verified that the mean reaction times varied from 64 to 195 min. It is a remarkable result, since the proposed analysis can be performed with simple, fast and low-cost instrumentation and needs only a worksheet software, whereas the Chapelle test takes 16 hours and provides no dynamic information. Besides the limitation that the methodology is not able to quantify and to elucidate the effects of the specific surface area of the particles, which needs a complete BET study, the research provides a significant contribution for the understanding of the pozzolanic process, of great importance in both concrete and ceramic research.