Electrospun Composite Nanofibers for Sensor Applications
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1240-WW09-27
Electrospun Composite Nanofibers for Sensor Applications Li Han, Anthony Andrady, Kim Guzan, and David Ensor RTI International PO Box 12194 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2194 U.S.A.
ABSTRACT Electrospun polymer nanofiber materials have attracted tremendous interest in sensor applications as their effective sensing surface area dramatically increases with decreasing fiber diameter. The highly tunable polymer composite chemistry and surface functionality of the nanofiber material provides a wide platform for exploring different applications, such as filtration media, sound isolation materials, and sensor components. This paper presents a nanofiber sensor platform device composed of electrospun polymer/carbon composite nanofibers combined with electrodes directly printed onto the surface of the electrospun fiber mat. This structure forms an integrated sensor system for detecting various chemical vapors including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and oxidative gases. In this sensor, the composite polymer nanofibers form a chemo-resistor sensing material, and the conductivity of these composite sensing materials varies with chemical vapor exposure. The sensor performance exhibits very stable baselines with dramatically reduced noise levels compared to conventional interdigitated electrodes. Furthermore, the sensor response to different vapors shows a linear relationship between conductivity change and vapor concentration in the range of ppb – ppm for some analytes, including methanol, chloroform and ozone. The sensitivity and selectivity of these sensors to different vapor analytes will also be discussed. INTRODUCTION The high specific surface area of nanostructured materials provides a potentially larger analyte-sensing material interface than planar thin-film sensing materials such as metal nanoparticle, semiconductor, or polymer thin-film–based sensors [1-4]. This increase in specific surface area could lead to improved sensitivity and selectivity in sensor applications. Despite the advantages of these sensing materials, the design of a high-sensitivity, high-selectivity, wearable, and low-cost disposable sensor system remains a challenge. Electrospinning is reported to generate nanofibers with a well-defined surface and bulk structure. The ease of material fabrication makes it an ideal candidate for a number of different applications for large-scale production. These nanofibers have been used in several commercial applications (e.g., filtration, sound-proof materials). Here we report our laboratory’s recent advances on using electrospun composite polymer nanofibers as sensing material. In this sensor study, we chose resistivity detection because the sensor response can be easily captured by using either a handheld multimeter or custom-designed portable electronics. While the selection of a conducting polymer with the desired surface and bulk material functionality is rather limited, in this study, we fabricated polymer composite-sensing material with the incorporation of Single Walled Carbon Nanotub
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