Artificial tailored catalytic activity for identification of 6 kinds of volatile organic compounds via the light-regulated electrochemical reaction

摘要： Light-regulated electrochemical reaction is confirmed to be useful to improve the classification efficiency. However, the use of different photoactive sensing materials results in time-consuming for exploring well-designed materials, besides, the light-regulated electrochemical reaction only improved the classification feature while didn't bring essential difference in the distinguish capability yet. Herein, a zirconia-based electrochemical sensor array comprised of 3 types of ZnO/In2O3 composite sensing materials is fabricated. After illumination, significantly enhancement is witnessed for the response magnitude and detection limit. Additionally, the response signal of the sensor array to part of the examined volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is selectively enhanced and 3 more disparate response patterns are generated. Through inputting all the response patterns into principle component analysis (PCA) software, 6 kinds of concerned VOCs have been fully classified. Conclusively, with utilizing sensing materials with similar composition, the fabrication process of the sensor array can be simplified. Particularly, after exposure to illumination the sensor array consisting of limited photoactive sensing materials (e.g. 3 kinds of materials) can identify even more number of gases (e.g. 6 types of VOCs). We anticipate these promising results shed light on the bright future of designing compact sensing devices for progressively smarter monitoring of concerned gas species.