Volatile Organic Compounds Sensing Using Optical Fibre Long Period Grating with Mesoporous Nano-Scale Coating
Sensors
In: Sensors, vol. 17, no. 2, article 205, 2017.
Abstract
A long period grating (LPG) modified with a mesoporous film infused with a calixarene as a functional compound was employed for the detection of individual volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and their mixtures. The mesoporous film consisted of an inorganic part, SiO2 nanoparticles (NPs), along with an organic moiety of poly(allylamine hydrochloride) polycation PAH, which was finally infused with the functional compound, p-sulphanato calix[4]arene (CA[4]) or p-sulphanato calix[8]arene (CA[8]). The LPG sensor was designed to operate at the phase matching turning point to provide the highest sensitivity. The sensing mechanism is based on the measurement of the refractive index (RI) change induced by a complex of the VOCs with calixarene. The LPG, modified with a coating of 5 cycles of (SiO2 NPs/PAH) and infused with CA[4] or CA[8], was exposed to chloroform, benzene, toluene and acetone vapours. The British Standards test of the VOCs emissions from material (BS EN ISO 16000-9:2006) was used to test the LPG sensor performance.
Full author abstract reproduced verbatim from the open-access article under CC BY 4.0.
FLEC use
FLEC mention, comparison or reference
The full text mentions FLEC in the introduction as an existing portable method for measuring material emissions. The authors tested their own coated optical-fibre sensor under BS EN ISO 16000-9 conditions and did not use or develop FLEC.