Fluorescence and Phosphorescence Chemical Sensors Applied to Water Samples

Due to the outstanding characteristics of both fluorescence and phosphorescence signals, they are widely applied to the construction of chemical sensors. The development of these sensors for the detection and quantification of compounds of environmental concern is an active research topic, daily enriched with the contribution of new works in the area. This chapter provides fundamentals and practical aspects of this type of sensors, focusing in those works devoted to quantify both organic and inorganic pollutants in environmental waters. The chapter is organized upon the basic functional units of a chemical sensor. A few examples of strategies of evaluation involving multivariate chemometric analysis are also discussed.