A Sensor Array with Functionalized Gold Nanoparticles for Detection of Toxic Volatile Organic Compounds in Air

Current gas sensors have common challenges of poor selectivity and high limit of detection for sensing toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) mixture in environmental air. This paper reports a microfabricated sensor array with gold nanoparticles (AuNP) coated by synthesized functional ligands to achieve highly selective and sensitive detection of toxic benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylene (BTEX), trichloroethylene (TCE) and carbonyl compounds in environmental air. The novel ligands with specific motifs for strong interaction with target compounds significantly increase sensitivity and selectivity of AuNP based sensor array for sensing a broad range of toxic VOCs in environmental air.