Porosity makes powerful affinity materials for quartz crystal microbalances. The shape-persistent organic cages and pores create superior affinity systems to existing ones for direct tracing of aromatic solvent vapors. A shape and size selectivity for the analytes is observed. These organic cages can be processed to thin films with highly reproducible sensing properties.

Organic cages were identified as highly potent affinity materials for the tracing of γ-butyrolactone. The selectivity over ethanol and water is based on the interior functional groups which allow preferential hydrogen bonding to the target analyte.

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SummaryThe readily available ex-chiral-pool building block (−)-isosteviol was combined with the C 3-symmetric platforms hexahydroxytriphenylene and hexaaminotriptycene providing large and rigid molecular architectures. Because of the persistent cavities these scaffolds are very potent supramolecular affinity materials for head space analysis by quartz crystal microbalances. The scaffolds serve in particular as templates for tracing air-borne arenes at low concentration. The affinities of the synthesized materials towards different air-borne arenes were determined by 200 MHz quartz crystal microbalances.

A Teflon-like coating is the key for the boost in sensitivity of quartz microbalances for the tracing of airborne analytes. Since the undesired signals for the interfering compounds are suppressed and the ones for the targeted compounds (e.g., peroxide explosives) are enhanced, the PCA output is improved.