As threat of chemical weapons such as nerve agents persists at domestic and international level, soldiers and emergency care providers face exposure to potentially hazardous chemical environments. Current in-field detectors that provide real-time monitoring of these nerve agents such as photoacoustic spectroscopy and gas chromatography suffer from operational complexity, slow response times, and limited portability. Here, we present design and fabrication of lightweight chemiresistive sensor that can be directly integrated into soldier uniform. We utilized two high surface area materials to create a composite sensing element: surface functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNT) as sensing component and electrospun fibers as flexible substrate. A vacuum-assisted spray layer-by-layer technique was employed to conformally deposit multilayer MWNT films on individual fibers to yield an electronically conducting network with tunable properties. The MWNT-coated fiber based chemical sensor was able to detect dimethyl methylphosphonate as low as 10 ppb in water and 5 ppm in vapor.

Fabrication of multiwalled carbon nanotube multilayers-coated electrospun fibers for DMMP detection

245th National Meeting (2013)

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