Volatile Organic Compound Sensing Array and Optoelectronic Filter System using Ion-Pairing Dyes with a Wide Visible Spectrum

An ideal dye-based sensing array has essential design requirements, including facile preparation methodology, tolerance to water vapor, a broad range of color-responsive changes, and a simple readout system. Here, a brief synthetic route is developed for ion-pairing dyes exhibiting unusual chromatic changes across the entire visible spectrum. It requires only mixing and precipitation under mild conditions. The dyes are applied to a sensing array containing 12 sensing elements with different initial states. Owing to the numerous color variations of the dyes, the color map generated by the array is highly simple yet sufficiently accurate to distinguish among the different functional groups (such as amines, aldehydes, and carboxylic acids) as well as carbon chain lengths. Principle component analysis (PCA) demonstrates that volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can be well classified according to the color changes of the sensing array. The ion-pairing dyes are embedded into 3D stacked nanofibers via electrospinning, and function as effective harmful-gas (e.g., formaldehyde) sensors with sub-ppm theoretical detection limits (0.15 ppm). Finally, the 3D stacked nanofibers can be employed in an optoelectronic filter system that automatically checks for formaldehyde in the surroundings and also confirms the effective removal of the detected formaldehyde by the gas filter cartridge.