Ionic Liquid Interface Electrochemistry and Gas Sensor Applications

Gas sensors are of increasing interest due to their potential applications in ambient air monitoring, occupational health and safety, biomedical diagnostics, industrial process control, and military and civilian counterterrorism. The most sought-after sensors are the autonomous/self-reporting sensors that are small, low cost and low power and could provide accurate detection of important analytes in the concentration range of interests with high sensitivity and specificity for these applications. Chemicals and materials with active ionic species such as ionic liquids are widely employed in various chemical sensing applications either as electrolytes, solvents and/or sensing materials. In parallel, nanomaterials offer several distinct advantages as electrochemical catalysts due to their unique physical and chemical properties at the nanoscale. In this presentation, we will discuss the fundamental and applied research of ionic liquids and interface electrochemistry at several different types of nanomaterials-based electrode for gas sensor applications. We demonstrated that the combination of the complementing attributes of ionic liquids and the nanocatalysts enables a systematic design process across many components to enhance sensing capability for miniaturized gas sensor system implementation. The fundamental scope of our novel approach is broad and could yield forward-thinking solutions to many sensors' challenges, especially miniaturization and robustness that is essential for their integration with engineering advancements such as portable electronics, networked sensing and next-generation monolithic implementation of autonomous sensors with the performance, cost, power, and operational lifetime characteristics to suit a broad range of applications.