Graphenea graphene has recently been utilized in the US to manufacture chemical sensors with dramatically improved performance. These chemicals are particularly commercially intriguing as they are comprised of untreated off-the-shelf CVD graphene.
Graphene Chemical Sensors
A group of universities, private businesses, and army research centers assembled these sensors using a simple, CMOS-compatible method. When tested using many structurally similar and diverse chemical vapors, these sensors identified the components with an unrivaled degree of selectivity. These sensors are also useful on a wide-scale as they can be automated.
Graphene chemical sensors have fast response and unprecedented specificity. Reprinted with permission from ACS Sens., 2016, 1 (1), pp 26–31. Copyright 2016 American Chemical Society.
These sensors were then tested by 30-second exposure to analytes within vials. Even though all of the different chemicals saw the same increase in electrical resistance superseded by a decrease, the compounds all obtained different shaped responses. The transitory response was then assessed with principal component analysis to differentiate between the different chemicals.
Instrument learning-based procedures were utilized to manufacture an algorithm to detect and characterize many different compounds in under 5 minutes. Notably, these sensors can even discriminate between monosubstituted compounds (compounds where hydrogen has been dislodged by another group of atoms).
Key Features
Eleven different compounds and nine monosubstituted benzene chemicals were identified with extreme accuracy (96% and 92% respectively). Additional important features include functionality at room temperature, fast recovery, and response, reproducibility, reversibility and sturdiness.
Additionally, these graphene sensors are perfect for the identification of externally modified elements in cross-reactive sensor arrays.
This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Graphenea.
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