The technology currently used for measuring pH is more than seven decades old and suffers from serious operational flaws. Specifically conventional glass electrodes: need constant re-calibration by suitably trained staff using expensive buffers, need careful wet storage and all too frequently break. More recent developments such as solid-state sensors and optical dye based systems all suffer serious limitations including limited pH measurement ranges and low sensitivity.
Researchers at the University of Oxford have developed a complete range of new pH sensors which are cheap and robust to manufacture, can be used over a broad pH range, are sensitive to small changes in pH, can be miniaturised and can be used at high temperatures and pressures; but, most important of all, the new sensors require no calibration.