Information
about the surrounding atmosphere at a real timescale
significantly relies on available gas sensors to be efficiently combined
into multisensor arrays as electronic olfaction units. However, the
array’s performance is challenged by the ability to provide
orthogonal responses from the employed sensors at a reasonable cost.
This issue becomes more demanded when the arrays are designed under
an on-chip paradigm to meet a number of emerging calls either in the
internet-of-things industry or in situ noninvasive diagnostics of
human breath, to name a few, for small-sized low-powered detectors.
The recent advances in additive manufacturing provide a solid top-down
background to develop such chip-based gas-analytical systems under
low-cost technology protocols. Here, we employ hydrolytically active
heteroligand complexes of metals as ink components for microplotter
patterning a multioxide combinatorial library of chemiresistive type
at a single chip equipped with multiple electrodes. To primarily test
the performance of such a multisensor array, various semiconducting
oxides of the p- and n-conductance
origins based on pristine and mixed nanocrystalline MnO
x
, TiO2, ZrO2, CeO2, ZnO, Cr2O3, Co3O4,
and SnO2 thin films, of up to 70 nm thick, have been printed
over hundred μm areas and their micronanostructure and fabrication
conditions are thoroughly assessed. The developed multioxide library
is shown to deliver at a range of operating temperatures, up to 400
°C, highly sensitive and highly selective vector signals to different,
but chemically akin, alcohol vapors (methanol, ethanol, isopropanol,
and n-butanol) as examples at low ppm concentrations
when mixed with air. The suggested approach provides us a promising
way to achieve cost-effective and well-performed electronic olfaction
devices matured from the diverse chemiresistive responses of the printed
nanocrystalline oxides.
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