Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Selective detection of specific volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is crucial for health, safety, and environmental applications, but current sensors suffer from poor selectivity and struggle to measure specific VOCs in the presence of interfering compounds and water vapor. To address this issue, we introduce the kinetic selectivity achievable in nanoporous crystals, specifically metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), into the domain of chemical sensors. In well-selected MOFs, similar molecules can have diffusivities that differ by orders of magnitude. Measuring these diffusivity values is challenging since conventional methods based on rapid changes in atmosphere composition cannot be used in a sensing context. A temperature-perturbation method is developed for thin-film capacitive sensors with a MOF dielectric layer to enable diffusivity measurements in a fixed atmosphere. Our approach enables a single sensor to differentiate and quantify VOCs at ppm concentrations, even in mixtures containing high water vapor concentrations, outperforming a state-of-the-art ten-element sensor array.
Source: Nature Communications
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $6,990
Awards: G1062307057, G2292701986, G2441669071, G2975900969, Rapid Assessment of Multicomponent Diffusion and Adsorption in Nanoporous Materials (RADIAN), Structured adsorbent films for volatile organic compound sensing (SAVOS), G5243291845, G6199220527, Chemical sensor arrays based on metal-organic frameworks and field-effect transistors (SAMETRA), G6585660369, Volatile organic compound sensors based on metal-organic framework gradients, G8008114168, G8049638234
OpenAlex ID: W4414488984