Microfluidic Space-Domain Time-Resolved Emission Spectroscopy of Terbium(III) and Europium(III) Chelates with Pyridine-2,6-Dicarboxylate

This article describes the utilization of laminar microflows for time resolved emission measurements with steady-state excitation and detection. Passing a laminar flow through a short illuminated section of a microchannel provided a means for pulsed like photoexcitation of the moieties carried by the fluid Imaging the microchannel flows carrying thus photoexcited chelates of lanthanide ions allowed us to extract their excited state lifetimes from the spatial distribution of the change's in emission intensity. The lifetime values obtained using this space domain approach agreed well with the lifetimes from time domain measurements. This validated space domain microfluidic approach reveals a means for miniaturization of time resolved emission spectroscopy.