SENSITIVITY OF TIACALIXARENE FILMS TOWARDS SET OF THE ALIPHATIC ALCOHOLS

Abstract

The manuscript presented is dedicated to the investigation of adsorption features of tiacalixarene films modified by lower and upper microcyclic rims as well as bridged sulfur atoms towards aliphatic alcohols. They were used as sensitive coating for gas sensors based on quartz crystal microbalance (QCM).Experiments were carried out with 8-channel chemosensory system of “Electronic Nose” (EN) type that had been developed and created in our Institute. Sensitive layers on the sensory elements (QCM resonators) have been deposited by means of dropping technique (small amount of an appropriable calixarene dissolved in chloroform was dropped on the sensor surface) with the following drying in the inert (argon vapor) media until total evaporation of solvent. Kinetics of sensor responses on high concentration level (close to saturated vapor pressure) as well as on consequent injection of analytes in the concentration range 10 – 1600 ppm have been obtained. It was shown that tiacalixarene films with phosphorus containing functional groups possessed the best sensitivity amid all matter under study. Concentration dependencies of the sensors array with calixarene films mentioned above represented good linearity towards set of aliphatic alcohols (from methanol to pentanol) in the overall concentration range under study. Detection limits reached values as lower as 10 ppm for “heavy” alcohols and 20-30 ppm for “light” one. It turned out the response magnitude on linear “heavy” alcohols (butanol, pentanol) was higher than on their isomers.