Abstract
We report an entirely new class of printed electrical gas sensors that are produced at near “zero cost”. This technology exploits the intrinsic hygroscopic properties of cellulose fibers within paper; although it feels and looks dry, paper contains substantial amount of moisture, adsorbed from the environment, enabling the use of wet chemical methods for sensing without manually adding water to the substrate. The sensors exhibit high sensitivity to water-soluble gases (e.g., lower limit of detection for NH3 < 200 parts-per-billion) with a fast and reversible response. The sensors show comparable or better performance (especially at high relative humidity) than most commercial ammonia sensors at a fraction of their price (<$0.02 per sensor). We demonstrate that the sensors proposed can be integrated into food packaging to monitor freshness (to reduce food waste and plastic pollution) or implemented into near-field-communication tags to function as wireless, battery-less gas sensors that can be interrogated with smartphones.
Highlights
Food waste is a major global problem with substantial economic and environmental consequences;1 30% of all food produced for human consumption (∼1.3 billion tons) is thrown away each year.[2]
We presented an entirely new class of near-zero-cost, electrical, gas sensors that can quantitatively detect the level of watersoluble gases in the atmosphere, using cellulose paper as the sensing material
Among the gases we tested (i.e., carbon monoxide (CO), CO2, H2S, TMA, NH3), PEGS were most sensitive to ammonia, because of its high solubility in water
Summary
Food waste is a major global problem with substantial economic and environmental consequences;1 30% of all food produced for human consumption (∼1.3 billion tons) is thrown away each year.[2]. We propose a highly sensitive, eco-friendly, near-zero-cost, paper-based, electrical gas sensor (PEGS) technology for the sensing of water-soluble gases such as ammonia, trimethylamine, carbon dioxide, etc. We have applied the PEGS technology to quantitatively monitor the freshness of packaged foods through sensing of spoilage gases, primarily focusing on meat products such as fish and poultry.
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