Selenide and telluride glasses for mid-infrared bio-sensing Shuo Cui a,b , Radwan Chahal a , Yaroslav Shpotyuk a , Catherine Boussard a , Jacques Lucas a , Frederic Charpentier c , Hugues Tariel c , Olivier Loréal d , Virginie Nazabal a , Olivier Sire e , Valérie Monbet f , Zhiyong Yang g,‡ , Pierre Lucas g , Bruno Bureau a1 a Equipe Verres et Céramiques UMR-CNRS 6226 Institut des Science Chimique de Rennes, Université de Rennes 1, France. b Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. c DIAFIR Company, Le Gallium, 80 avenue des buttes de coesmes, 35700 Rennes, France. d INSERM UMR991, Université de Rennes 1, 35033 Rennes, France. e LIMAT-B, Université Européenne de Bretagne, Université de Bretagne-Sud, 56017 Vannes, France f IRMAR, UMR 6625, Université Européenne de Bretagne, 35042 Rennes, France. g Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Arizona, 4715 E. Fort Lowell Road, Tucson, AZ 85712, USA ‡ now at Australian National University, Canberra, Australia ABSTRACT Fiber Evanescent Wave Spectroscopy (FEWS) is an efficient way to collect optical spectra in situ, in real time and even, hopefully, in vivo. Thanks to selenide glass fibers, it is possible to get such spectra over the whole mid-infrared range from 2 to 12 μm. This working window gives access to the fundamental vibration band of most of biological molecules. Moreover selenide glasses are stable and easy to handle, and it is possible to shape the fiber and create a tapered sensing head to drastically increase the sensitivity. Within the past decades, numerous multi-disciplinary studies have been conducted in collaboration with the City Hospital of Rennes. Clinical trials have provided very promising results in biology and medicine which have led to the creation in 2011 of the DIAFIR Company dedicated to the commercialization of fiber-based infrared biosensors. In addition, new glasses based on tellurium only have been recently developed, initially in the framework of the Darwin mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA). These glasses transmit light further into the far-infrared and could also be very useful for medical applications in the near future. Indeed, they permit to reach the vibrational bands of biomolecules laying from 12 to 16 μm where selenide glasses do not transmit light anymore. However, while Se is a very good glass former, telluride glasses tend to crystallize easily due to the metallic nature of Te bonds. Hence, further work is under way to stabilize the glass composition for fibers drawing and to lower the optical losses for improving their sensitivity as bio-sensors. Keywords : mid-infrared spectroscopy, optical fiber, chalcogenide glass, selenium, tellurium. 1 Correspondence : Email : bruno.bureau@univ-rennes1.fr , Telephone : 33 (0) 2 23 23 65 73, Fax : 33 (0) 2 23 23 56 11 Invited Paper Optical Fibers and Sensors for Medical Diagnostics and Treatment Applications XIV, edited by Israel Gannot, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 8938, 893805 · © 2014 SPIE · CCC code: 1605-7422/14/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.2036734 Proc. of SPIE Vol. 8938 893805-1 Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 05/07/2014 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms