Cuprous Oxide Based Chemiresistive Electronic Nose for Volatile Organic Compounds Discrimination

This paper reports a facile functionalization method on metal oxide semiconductor and a cuprous oxide (Cu2O) based chemiresistive electronic nose for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) detection. A library of functionalized Cu2O nano-spheres was developed through silanization using chemically diverse organosilanes. An electronic nose was fabricated with one unmodified Cu2O nanospheres and five functionalized Cu2O nanospheres as the sensing elements. The electronic nose showed stable and rapid resistance responses to 25-200 ppm model VOCs, with the operating temperature of 180 oC. Single VOCs and ternary VOC mixtures could be discriminated by the electronic nose, and six types of tea leaves were also proved distinguishable as an illustration of the application of the electronic nose. We expected the silanization could provide a simple approach for material diversification and the electronic nose would have further application in complex gas samples identification and discrimination.