Highly sensitive detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is a long-standing technical goal.  The chemical functionalities and physical properties of VOCs vary greatly making it a sizable technical challenge to be able to detect the very wide breadth of VOCs that are of practical interest with a single detection method.  Even more challenging is to make such sensors at low cost.  This lecture will summarize 3M's development of low cost VOC sensors which make use of polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs).  The ability of PIMs to adsorb a wide range of VOCs with only minimal interference from water enables the development of simple chemical threshold indicators which can be tailored to change color to different concentration ranges of VOCs.  The versatility and low cost of this sensor technology makes it of interest for a wide range of chemical detection applications.

Development of low cost volatile organic compound sensors using polymers of intrinsic microporosity

248th National Meeting (2014)

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