AsianScientist (Apr. 26, 2016) – In recent years, there has been an increase in health problems due to air pollution in personal living spaces, known as sick building syndrome, along with other conditions such as sick car and sick school syndromes.
Now, scientists from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Southampton in the UK have developed a graphene-based sensor and switch that can detect harmful air pollution in homes while running on very little power. Details of their device were published in Science Advances.
Some of these harmful chemical gases have low concentrations in the parts per billion range—extremely difficult to detect with current environmental sensor technology, which can only detect concentrations of parts per million (ppm).
The sensor works by detecting individual carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules and volatile organic compound gas molecules found in building and interior materials, furniture and even household goods. The CO2 molecules bond, by way of adsorption, to the suspended graphene sheet one by one by when an electric field is applied.
According to the researchers, led by Professor Hiroshi Mizuta who holds a joint appointment at both universities, the detection time is only a few minutes.
“In contrast to the commercially available environmental monitoring tools, this extreme sensing technology enables us to realize significant miniaturization, resulting in weight and cost reduction in addition to the remarkable improvement in the detection limit from the ppm levels to the parts per billion (ppb) levels,” said Mizuta.
Certain research group members have also recently developed graphene-based switches using a uniquely thin film. The switches, which require remarkably low voltages of below three volts, can be used to power electronic components on demand, greatly improving the battery lifetime of personal electronic devices.
Mizuta and the research group are now aiming to bring the two technologies together to create ultra-low-power environmental sensor systems that can detect single molecules.
The article can be found at: Sun et al. (2016) Room Temperature Detection of Individual Molecular Physisorption Using Suspended Bilayer Graphene.
———
Source: University of Southampton.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.
