AAAR 32nd Annual Conference
September 30 - October 4, 2013
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Inexpensive Electrochemical Sensor Technology for Air Quality Monitoring
PRAVEEN KUMAR SEKHAR, Kumar Subramaniyam, Washington State University
Abstract Number: 572 Working Group: Portable and Inexpensive Sensor Technology for Air Quality Monitoring
Abstract Devices such as mobile phones, computers, and sensors are shrinking in size and cost. The air quality community is also experiencing this change as manufacturers of air quality instruments and sensors reduce the size and cost of their products. Low cost sensors have opened up a new vision for air quality control that includes the do-it-yourself (e.g., citizen science) community. In this talk, inexpensive electrochemical based sensor technology will be presented on air quality monitoring. Specifically, the talk will focus on the detection of gas phase pollutants.
Gases have been successfully sensed by gas phase induced polarization of metal/solid electrolyte/metal interfaces for many decades. The simplest operational mode occurs when the interfacial polarizations are fixed by a reversible reaction between the oxygen vacancies at the electrode-electrolyte interfaces and the partial pressure of oxygen gas at the interface. When the interfacial polarization is controlled by multiple triple-phase boundary reactions, the device is said to be a “mixed potential” sensor. The successful design of gas sensors of each of these types often requires different approaches to the engineering of the gas/electrode/electrolyte interface. Sensors that operate in mixed potential mode are particularly sensitive to electrode/electrolyte interfacial morphology as the devices rely on selective catalysis of desired reactions. Analysis of the requirements for mixed potential gas sensor design has led to the development of sensors with geometries that differ substantially from traditional solid electrolyte based sensors. Adopting commercial automotive manufacturing methods have led to the development of low cost mixed potential sensors