A HIGHLY SENSITIVE MOISTURE-RESISTANT BTEX SENSOR BASED ON POLYANILINE NANOFIBERS

Abstract

The real-time sensing of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene (BTEX) vapor has become urgent due to their widespread hazards. As a sensing platform that combines low energy consumption and high sensitivity, moisture-resistant detection of ppb-level BTEX vapor remains a challenge for quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) based gas sensors. In this work, we employed polyaniline nanofibers as the sensing material, significantly enhancing the QCM sensor’s detection capability for BTEX vapor down to the 50 ppb level. Besides, thanks to the hydrophobicity of polyaniline nanofibers, this sensor shows minimal response fluctuations to BTEX vapor in the relative humidity range of 50-90%. Furthermore, this sensor exhibits a short response time and excellent long-term stability, thereby presenting a broad prospect for future industrial applications in BTEX vapor detection.