Deep-UV Triggered TiO2/WO3 NCs With Enhanced Selectivity for Breath Isoprene Detection

Ideal sensors for detection are a critical issue faced in real-world applications, which keeps the research activities in the field of sensors active, especially in the health sector, to diagnose and prognosis the disease in advance and non-invasive ways (such as breath analyzers). In this work, a prototype of sensor detection for Cholesterol abnormalities (root cause for Cardiovascular disease) is concentrated. Isoprene (C5H8) is the breath biomarker observed during cholesterol abnormalities. To minimize the complex lithography challenges, optical activation (Deep-UV LED, lambda = 300 nm) is focused on sensing Isoprene with Titanium dioxide/Tungsten oxide (TiO2/WO3) nanocomposites (NCs). Defect engineering of WO3 by the addition of TiO2 nanoparticles is concentrated, and it is optimized with the aid of X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and Photoluminescence (PL) to determine the Charge Accumulation Layer (CAL). Isoprene is detected in the range of 20 ppb (Abnormal cholesterol) to 80ppb (Normal Cholesterol) by the optimized detection layer with an enhancement of 79.5% in sensitivity with a 1.5 min response time and 25 sec recovery time during the deployment of the UV-activated technique. Apart from the miniaturization limitations faced for fabricating a sensor prototype, the critical point is cross selectivity. Hence, the detection layer is ratified in the presence of other contents of breath such as CO2, NH3, NO and CO and the sensor could achieve an average selectivity of 10.53% compared to the state of art VOC sensors.

Automated summary

This research focuses on detecting cholesterol abnormalities using an optimized detection layer with TiO2/WO3 nanocomposites and deep-UV LED activation. The sensor shows improved sensitivity and selectivity, allowing for early diagnosis of diseases in a non-invasive manner.