Novel and sensitive ethanol chemi-sensor based on nanohybrid materials

Environmental pollution is one of the global hot issues and need an urgent demand to detect and monitor the pollutants which affect the environment. Ethanol is one of the organic pollutants which cause severe harmful effect on environment due to its toxic nature. For the detection and quantification of organic pollutants, sensors are the promising and reliable technology which has vital role in the environmental and health monitoring. A lot of sensor materials have been exposed but the prospective for industrial development as sensors and environmental supplement are still limited due to its non eco-friendly nature. Therefore, environmental friendly and biodegradable ethanol chemical sensors have been fabricated by efficient utilization of poly propylene carbonate (PPC) and PPC/silica hybrid (H) for the detection and quantification of ethanol in the environment. PPC/silica hybrid membrane has been synthesized by intercalation of silica into PPC matrix using a sol-gel technique. The resulting membrane was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), while the morphology of the hybrid was investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Both PPC and H performed as best ethanol chemi-sensor in term of sensitivity. Hybrid membrane showed 2.08 times higher sensitivity (0.5698 μA.cm ^-2.mM ^-1) than pure PCC (0.2534 μA.cm ^-2.mM ^-1). Hybrid membrane also displayed 3.1 times lower limit of detection (LOD, 20.70 μM) than pure PCC (64.29 μM). Therefore, hybridization is an efficient route to fabricate proficient aqueous ethanol sensor.