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Hydrogel-Based Plasmonic Sensor Substrate for the Detection of Ethanol

The in-line monitoring of ethanol concentration in liquids is a crucial part of process monitoring in breweries and distilleries. Current methods are based on infrared spectroscopy, which is time-consuming and costly, making these methods unaffordable for small and middle-sized companies. To overcom...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Kroh, Christoph, Wuchrer, Roland, Steinke, Nadja, Guenther, Margarita, Gerlach, Gerald, Härtling, Thomas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6470601/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30871145
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s19061264
Descripción
Sumario:The in-line monitoring of ethanol concentration in liquids is a crucial part of process monitoring in breweries and distilleries. Current methods are based on infrared spectroscopy, which is time-consuming and costly, making these methods unaffordable for small and middle-sized companies. To overcome these problems, we presented a small, compact, and cost-effective sensing method for the ethanol content, based on a nanostructured, plasmonically active sensor substrate. The sensor substrate is coated with an ethanol-sensitive hydrogel, based on polyacrylamide and bisacrylamide, which induces a change in the refractive index of the substrate surface. The swelling and shrinking of such hydrogels offer a means to measure the ethanol content in liquids, which can be determined in a simple transmittance setup. In our study, we demonstrated the capability of the sensor principle for the detection of ethanol content ranging from 0 to 30 vol% ethanol. Furthermore, we determined the response time of the sensor substrate to be 5.2 min, which shows an improvement by a factor of four compared to other hydrogel-based sensing methods. Finally, initial results for the sensor’s lifetime are presented.