Microfluidic gas sensors were enhanced for selective detection of natural gas odorants. Monitoring natural gas odorants is of a great importance due to its role in controlling environmental pollution, detecting odor fading and preventing it, minimizing equipment deterioration, and detecting leakage. Natural gas odorants are generally found in a mixture of different gases. As a result, selectivity (specificity) is one of the main challenges associated with their detection. Among the existing gas sensing tools, microfluidic gas sensors have garnered attention during the past few years as they are compact, inexpensive, fast, and sensitive. Although the microfluidic gas sensors have shown to be selective toward volatile organic compounds, they suffer from poor selectivity when they are exposed to natural gas sulfur-based analytes. In this study microfluid gas sensors were physically (changing the width) and chemically modified (coating their surface) to enhance the selectivity of sensor. The goal has been to increase the effect of surface adsorption compared to mass diffusion in the microchannel by reducing the width and coating the surface with graphene quantum dots (adding nanofeatures and functional groups).  The modified sensors were exposed to two different sulfur-based analytes: tert-butyl mercaptan, and ethyl methyl sulfide separately and with different mixtures ratios. By comparing the performance of enhanced sensors with the original one, it became clear that geometry and surface chemistry modifications can improve the selectivity by an average of %114.0 for single gases and %73.5 for the mixtures.

Enhanced microfluidic gas sensors for selective detection of natural gas sulfur-based odorants

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

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