Volatile Organic Compound Detection
What is a Gas Sensor?
The connected and smart devices are part of the Internet of Things (IoT) which can build a network to create physical electronic devices such as sensors and actuators, both collect and exchange the data.
The need for such smart sensing devices has emerged over the last decades with the increasing deterioration of health conditions in the world. Detecting the harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in gases is helpful in the diagnosis of some diseases. Human breath can include some volatile organic compounds which act as a biomarker to reveal specific diseases. For instance, acetone is a biomarker for diabetes. Therefore, it has critical importance to develop any flexible and wearable device which can detect air pollutants to diagnose the patient’s problems quickly.
Internet of Things sensor generally possesses a good sensing and monitoring ability to provide useful information but to be able to define any device as the gas sensor, there are some requirements in gas sensor device making.
By definition, a gas sensor is a device that can produce significant signal outputs to verify the presence of a detectable concentration of a specific chemical compound in the pollutant gas. Therefore, good selectivity and stability, high sensitivity, easy to combine with available technologies, and of course, low cost and power consumption are essential key requirements that a gas sensor needs to fulfill.
Not just in the biomedical applications, also in the different fields such as industrial, security, and public safety and in environmental studies demand the detection of volatile compounds by using gas sensors.
