A Novel Flexible Room Temperature Ethanol Gas Sensor Based on SnO2 Doped Poly-Diallyldimethylammonium Chloride

Abstract

A novel flexible room temperature ethanol gas sensor was fabricated and demonstrated in this paper. The polyimide (PI) substrate-based sensor was formed by depositing a mixture of SnO2 nanopowder and poly-diallyldimethylammonium chloride (PDDAC) on as-patterned interdigitated electrodes. PDDAC acted both as the binder, promoting the adhesion between SnO2 and the flexible PI substrate, and the dopant. We found that the response of SnO2-PDDAC sensor is significantly higher than that of SnO2 alone, indicating that the doping with PDDAC effectively improved the sensor performance. The SnO2-PDDAC sensor has a detection limit of 10 ppm at room temperature and shows good selectivity to ethanol, making it very suitable for monitoring drunken driving. The microstructures of the samples were examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscope (TEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectra (FT-IR), and the sensing mechanism is also discussed in detail.

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“…Fig. 1(a), the spectrum before calcination, shows that the peaks in the FTIR pattern at about 33003420 cm -1 and 1620 cm -1 can be attributed to the stretching vibration of O-H groups and the bending vibration of adsorbed molecular water, respectively [40][41][42]. The peak at around 1410 cm −1 was assigned to NH deformation of ammonia [42].…”

Complementary Split-Ring Resonator-Loaded Microfluidic Ethanol Chemical Sensor

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