Journal
SENSORS AND ACTUATORS B-CHEMICAL
Volume 290, Issue -, Pages 520-526Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE SA
DOI: 10.1016/j.snb.2019.03.147
Keywords
Stimuli-responsive polymers; Color tunable materials; Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) microgels; Volatile organic compounds; Etalons
Funding
- University of Alberta (the Department of Chemistry)
- University of Alberta (Faculty of Science)
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
- Alberta Advanced Education & Technology Small Equipment Grants Program (AET/SEGP)
- Grand Challenges Canada
- Alberta Innovates
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Optical sensors (etalons) composed of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAm)-based microgels have been developed for detecting volatile organic compound (VOC) vapors such as hexane, cyclohexane, chloroform, petroleum ether and tetrahydrofuran (THF). PNIPAm-based microgels were synthesizedandcharacterized, and etalons were subsequently fabricated, which exhibited visual color and multipeak reflectance spectra. The color change of etalons in response to VOC vapor exposure was evaluated by bubbling the vapors through water containing the etalon, and the shift in the reflectance peak position monitored. The results showed that the etalons were able to respond to the VOC vapor by changing their color, as evidenced by a shift in the position of the reflectance peak. Dynamic light scattering data showed that the microgels dissolved in solutions composed of the respective VOCs exhibit sizes that vary with VOC type and concentration, which leads to the optical response observed for the microgel-based etalons. The results showed that the etalons were most responsive to THF, which we conclude is a result of cononsolvency of the microgels in THF/water mixtures. With the setup used here, we could detect 1.27mM THF vapor in 4 min, although the limit of detection, and detection time, can be tuned by changing the experimental conditions. Finally, we showed that individual etalons can be used at least 3 times to detect THF vapor without a loss in etalon function, which suggests that the etalons can be used multiple times for detecting VOC vapors.
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