CO(2) and O(2) Detection by Electric Field Sensors

In this work an array of chemical sensors for gas detection has been developed, starting with a commercial sensor platform developed by Microchip (GestIC), which is normally used to detect, trace, and classify hand movements in space. The system is based on electric field changes, and in this work, it has been used as mechanism revealing the adsorption of chemical species CO(2) and O(2). The system is composed of five electrodes, and their responses were obtained by interfacing the sensors with an acquisition board based on an ATMEGA 328 microprocessor (Atmel MEGA AVR microcontroller). A dedicated measurement chamber was designed and prototyped in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) using an Ultimaker3 3D printer. The measurement cell size is 120 × 85 mm. Anthocyanins (red rose) were used as a sensing material in order to functionalize the sensor surface. The sensor was calibrated using different concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide, ranging from 5% to 25%, mixed with water vapor in the range from 50% to 90%. The sensor exhibits good repeatability for CO(2) concentrations. To better understand the sensor response characteristics, sensitivity and resolution were calculated from the response curves at different working points. The sensitivity is in the order of magnitude of tens to hundreds of µV/% for CO(2), and of µV/% in the case of O(2). The resolution is in the range of 10(−1)%–10(−3)% for CO(2), and it is around 10(−1)% for O(2). The system could be specialized for different fields, for environmental, medical, and food applications.