A Chemiresistor Sensor Array Based on Graphene Nanostructures: From the Detection of Ammonia and Possible Interfering VOCs to Chemometric Analysis

Abstract

Sensor arrays are currently attracting the interest of researchers due to their potential of overcoming the limitations of single sensors regarding selectivity, required by specific applications. Among the materials used to develop sensor arrays, graphene has not been so far extensively exploited, despite its remarkable sensing capability. Here we present the development of a graphene-based sensor array prepared by dropcasting nanostructure and nanocomposite graphene solution on interdigitated substrates, with the aim to investigate the capability of the array to discriminate several gases related to specific applications, including environmental monitoring, food quality tracking, and breathomics. This goal is achieved in two steps: at first the sensing properties of the array have been assessed through ammonia exposures, drawing the calibration curves, estimating the limit of detection, which has been found in the ppb range for all sensors, and investigating stability and sensitivity; then, after performing exposures to acetone, ethanol, 2-propanol, sodium hypochlorite, and water vapour, chemometric tools have been exploited to investigate the discrimination capability of the array, including principal component analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and Mahalanobis distance. PCA shows that the array was able to discriminate all the tested gases with an explained variance around 95%, while with an LDA approach the array can be trained to accurately recognize unknown gas contribution, with an accuracy higher than 94%.