Bioinspired Substrate Structures for High-Performance Room-Temperature Chemiresistive Gas Sensors

In the field of gas sensors, there is a growing demand for efficient gas detection. Current research mainly focuses on the selection and optimization of sensing materials, while the geometry of sensors is often ignored. Most sensors are designed with simple planar or cylindrical geometries. In this work, biomimetic sensor structures were built, inspired by the olfactory turbinate of the Labrador retriever. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations revealed that the biomimetic structure enhances sensing performance by optimizing the flow field distribution and increasing the local concentration and surface adsorption concentration around the sensor. To validate these biomimetic structures, we developed high-performance room-temperature chemiresistive gas sensors. We shaped the flexible sensors into forms mimicking canine turbinates and validated the impact of these structures on sensor performance. Experimental results show that the biomimetic sensors have an average response of 390% to 100 ppm of NH₃, which is 5.62 times higher than that of traditional, non-biomimetic sensors.