Simple and rapid differentiation of toxic gases using a quartz crystal microbalance sensor array coupled,with principal component analysis

A novel quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor array was fabricated for differentiating three toxic gases (NH3, CO and NO2) from their tertiary mixtures. The QCM sensor array composed of three QCM sensors that were constructed using graphene oxide (GO)-based and N-substituted pyrrole derivative based films. The response frequency changes of a QCM sensor array were recorded upon exposing to each target toxic gas with varying concentrations and the obtained data were analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA) in order to differentiate the target toxic gas under testing condition of tertiary mixing of toxic gases. The results of this work show promising prospects for the use of a low-cost, easy to use and rapid method for differentiating the target toxic gas in the presence of a mixture of gases. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.