Abstract
An air pollution detector is proposed based on a tube-shaped single-electron transistor (SET) sensor. By monitoring the flow control component of the detector, each air pollutant molecule can be placed at the center of a SET nanopore and is treated as an island of the SET device in the same framework. Electron transport in the SET was incoherent, and the performances of the SET were sensitive at the single molecule level. Employing first-principles calculations, electronic features of an air pollutant molecule within a tube-shaped SET environment were found to be independent of the molecule rotational orientations with respect to axis of symmetry, unlike the electronic features in a conventional SET environment. Charge stability diagrams of the island molecules were demonstrated to be distinct for each molecule, and thus they can serve as electronic fingerprints for detection. Using the same setup, quantification of the air pollutant can be realized at room temperature as well. The results presented herein may help provide guidance for the identification and quantification of various types of air pollutants at the molecular level by treating the molecule as the island of the SET component in the proposed detector.
Highlights
Air pollution occurs when harmful or excessive quantities of substances are introduced into Earth’s atmosphere, leading to public health and environmental problems [1]
We examined the performances of single-electron transistor (SET) configurations by calculating the physical quantities of interest, including the total energies as functions of the gate voltage, energy density, molecular energy spectra, and the charge stability diagrams
If the island and source/drain electrodes are weakly coupled, conduction takes place via the way of sequential tunneling, where an electron goes from the source to the island and transfers to the drain so as to complete the conduction path
Summary
Air pollution occurs when harmful or excessive quantities of substances are introduced into Earth’s atmosphere, leading to public health and environmental problems [1]. On the public health side, the toxic effects of air pollution have been individually identified in various organs of the body, leading to eighteen outpatient diseases, including cancer [2]. Air pollution can damage ecosystem functions and structures and result in global warming, acid rain, and deterioration of the ozone (O3) layer [4]. The impact of air pollution on materials is notorious, as chemical reactions between the polluted air and material matrices coating buildings or within structures may result in large maintenance costs [5]. Known as “air toxics”, are chemical species that may cause cancer and other chronic human health risks. Encountered hazardous air pollutants include benzene (C6H6), formaldehyde (CH2O), toluene (C7H8), xylene (C8H10), and benzo (a) pyrene (as a marker for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) [8]
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