Determination of the Concentration of Ultrafine Aerosol Using an Ionization Sensor

As public awareness of the threats related to ultrafine aerosols increases, there is a growing need for inexpensive, real-time exposure assessment devices. In this work, the well-established technology used in the smoke detector with a radioactive source was tested in laboratory conditions to check its suitability for determining the number concentration of the ultrafine aerosol. It has been shown that the sensor output changes linearly with the change of diesel soot concentration in the range up to 8.3 × 105 particles cm−3. The sensor has also been shown to be able to detect rapid changes in aerosol concentration. Empirical equations describing the influence of air velocity, temperature, relative humidity, and pressure on the sensor output were determined. The collected results confirm that the ionization sensor can be used to assess ultrafine aerosol exposure, although additional engineering work is required to increase the resolution of the output signal measurement and to compensate for the effects of weather conditions. The presented method can be used for concentration monitoring and risk assessment in environmental engineering, materials engineering, cosmetics industry, textiles, sports, chemical, mining, energy, etc.

Ionization Gas Sensor Using Suspended Carbon Nanotube Beams

An ionization sensor based on suspended carbon nanotubes (CNTs) was presented. A suspended CNT beam was fabricated by a low-temperature surface micromachining process using SU8 photoresist as the sacrificial layer. Application of a bias to the CNT beam generated very high non-linear electric fields near the tips of individual CNTs sufficient to ionize target gas molecules and initiate a breakdown current. The sensing mechanism of the CNT ionization sensor was discussed. The sensor response was tested in air, nitrogen, argon, and helium ambients. Each gas demonstrated a unique breakdown signature. Further, the sensor was tested with gaseous mixtures. The sensor exhibited good long-term stability and had comparable performance to other reported CNT-based ionization sensors in literature, which use high-temperature vapor deposition methods to grow CNTs. The sensor notably allowed for lower ionization voltages due to its reduced ionization gap size.

Selective Detection of NO and NO2 with CNTs-Based Ionization Sensor Array

The accurate detection of NOx is an important issue, because nitrogen oxides are not only environmental pollutants, but also harm to human health. An array composed of two carbon nanotubes (CNTs)-based ionization sensors with different separations is proposed for NO and NO2 selective detection. The experimental results indicate that the CNTs-based ionization sensor has an intrinsic, monotonically decreasing response to NO or NO2. The sensor with 80 µm separations and 100 µm separations exhibited the highest sensitivity of −0.11 nA/ppm to 300 ppm NO and −0.49 nA /ppm to 70 ppm NO2, respectively. Although the effect of the NO2 concentration on the NO response is much stronger than that of NO on NO2, the array of these two sensors still exhibits the ability to simultaneously detect the concentrations of NO and NO2 in a gas mixture without component separation.