< Back to previous page

Project

Development of nanostructured carbon-based platforms for advanced gas sensing

Among forefront applications of nanostructured carbon materials such as graphene and nanotubes, breathomics, environmental monitoring and food industry are challenging physics, chemistry and device engineering to develop extremely sensitive, selective, and stable platform to recognize ppb amount of target molecules in the environment.

In this thesis, the development of 6 platforms will be presented. The platforms are based on nanostructured carbon aimed mostly to discriminate potential pathologies through pattern recognition in molecular fingerprint of breath samples, but also for environmental monitoring or food industry applications. This objective will be realized through properly developed devices based first on CNTs on a plastic substrate or on silicon/silicon oxide substrate and then on graphene on silicon nitride. Different kinds of functionalization techniques of graphene and CNTs will be explored to enhance the sensitivity of the pristine layers, as well as different functionalization materials, going from nanoparticles to organic molecules or diazonium salt precursors.

The characterization of the materials involves electron and Raman spectroscopies, as well as atomic force microscopy, while gas exposures are carried out in the lab environment, which is much closer to the destination of the developed sensors, trying to investigate a low-ppm range or sub-ppm range of the considered gases. The gas discrimination is assessed through principal component analysis (PCA).

Finally, one of the developed devices is exposed to the exhaled breath of healthy subjects or patients affected by chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), demonstrating a remarkable capability to discriminate between healthy and sick patients.

Date:5 Feb 2019 →  13 Apr 2022
Keywords:gas sensors, graphene, carbon nanotubes, electronic nose, Breathomics
Disciplines:Sensors, biosensors and smart sensors not elsewhere classified, Surfaces, interfaces, 2D materials, Condensed matter physics and nanophysics not elsewhere classified, Biomedical instrumentation
Project type:PhD project