Boosting Selectivity and Sensitivity to Biomarkers of Quantum Resistive Vapour Sensors Used for Volatolomics with Nanoarchitectured Carbon Nanotubes or Graphene Platelets Connected by Fullerene Junctions

Abstract

Nanocarbon-based vapour sensors are increasingly used to make anticipated diagnosis of diseases by the analysis of volatile organic compound (VOC) biomarkers from the breath, i.e., volatolomics. However, given the tiny number of molecules to detect, usually only tens of parts per billion (ppb), increasing the sensitivity of polymer nanocomposite chemoresistive transducers is still a challenge. As the ability of these nanosensors to convert the interactions with chemical compounds into changes of resistance, depends on the variations of electronic transport through the percolated network of the conducting nanofillers, it is a key parameter to control. Actually, in this conducting architecture, the bottlenecks for electrons’ circulation are the interparticular junctions giving either ohmic conduction in the case of close contacts or quantum tunnelling when jumps though gaps are necessary. This in turn depends on a number of nanometric parameters such as the size and geometry of the nanofillers (spherical, cylindrical, lamellar), the method of structuring of the conductive architecture in the sensory system, etc. The present study focuses on the control of the interparticular junctions in quantum-resistive vapour sensors (vQRS) by nanoassembling pristine CNT or graphene covalently or noncovalently functionalized with spherical Buckminster fullerene (C60) into a percolated network with a hybrid structure. It is found that this strategy allows us to significantly boost, both selectivity and sensitivity of pristine CNT or graphene-based transducers exposed to a set of seven biomarkers, ethanol, methanol, acetone, chloroform, benzene, toluene, cyclohexane and water. This is assumed to result from the spherical fullerene acting on the electronic transport properties at the nanojunctions between the CNT or graphene nanofillers.

Self-Assembled Corn-Husk-Shaped Fullerene Crystals as Excellent Acid Vapor Sensors

“…Discovered in 1985, fullerene, an allotrope of carbon, is a cage-structured molecule with excellent redox, optoelectronic properties [15,16], which function as an ideal zerodimensional building block nanoarchitecture, and has already been broadly applied in sensing technologies [17][18][19][20][21]. Out of the demand for synthesis and fabrication of functional materials such as energy storage, environment protection, and device technology, self-assembly of fullerene has been heatedly discussed [22][23][24][25].…”

Review on Sensor Array-Based Analytical Technologies for Quality Control of Food and Beverages

“…Moreover, it is possible to tailor the material structure and properties to optimize the gas sensing performances [103][104][105]. Three types of organic nanomaterials have found significant research interest in chemiresistive/conductometric gas sensors: conducting polymer nanocomposite (CPC) [106][107][108][109], organic molecular materials (porphyrin, phthalocyanine, and corroles) [110][111][112][113], and nanocarbon materials (graphene, CNT, and fullerene) [114][115][116][117]. The application of CPC gas sensor-based e-nose in food quality analysis has been recently demonstrated by Graboski et al [118,119].…”