Investigation of Acetone Vapour Sensing Properties of a Ternary Composite of Doped Polyaniline, Reduced Graphene Oxide and Chitosan Using Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor

Abstract

This work reports the use of a ternary composite that integrates p-Toluene sulfonic acid doped polyaniline (PANI), chitosan, and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) as the active sensing layer of a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor. The SPR sensor is intended for application in the non-invasive monitoring and screening of diabetes through the detection of low concentrations of acetone vapour of less than or equal to 5 ppm, which falls within the range of breath acetone concentration in diabetic patients. The ternary composite film was spin-coated on a 50-nm-thick gold layer at 6000 rpm for 30 s. The structure, morphology and chemical composition of the ternary composite samples were characterized by FTIR, UV-VIS, FESEM, EDX, AFM, XPS, and TGA and the response to acetone vapour at different concentrations in the range of 0.5 ppm to 5 ppm was measured at room temperature using SPR technique. The ternary composite-based SPR sensor showed good sensitivity and linearity towards acetone vapour in the range considered. It was determined that the sensor could detect acetone vapour down to 0.88 ppb with a sensitivity of 0.69 degree/ppm with a linearity correlation coefficient of 0.997 in the average SPR angular shift as a function of the acetone vapour concentration in air. The selectivity, repeatability, reversibility, and stability of the sensor were also studied. The acetone response was 87%, 94%, and 99% higher compared to common interfering volatile organic compounds such as propanol, methanol, and ethanol, respectively. The attained lowest detection limit (LOD) of 0.88 ppb confirms the potential for the utilisation of the sensor in the non-invasive monitoring and screening of diabetes.

Near-infrared tunable surface plasmon resonance sensors based on graphene plasmons via electrostatic gating control

“…40% sensitivity enhancement was demonstrated experimentally 10 and highly sensitive GEMSPR sensors were used for biological sensing, [11][12][13][14][15] even gas sensing. 16,17 Although GEMSPR sensors can greatly enhance the performance in term of sensitivity comparing with the conventional SPR sensors, their intrinsic refractive index sensing character are still reserved. Furthermore, the working wavelengths of GEMSPR sensors are also limited to visible spectrum and near-IR spectrum that very closed to visible waveband and are still nonadjustable.…”

Graphene-Based Polymer Nanocomposites: Recent Advances

“…Numerous biosensors based on GRMs have been recently developed [ 13 ]. For instance, biosensor-based detection of acetone vapor, a good biomarker for the non-invasive diagnosis of diabetes, has been recently reported using a ternary composite comprising p-toluene sulfonic acid (PTSA) doped polyaniline (PANI), chitosan and rGO [ 14 ]. It consists in an optical biosensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) technique.…”