State Key Laboratory of Metal Matrix Composites, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240, PR China.
Sci Rep. 2017 Feb 6;7:42207. doi: 10.1038/srep42207.
pH sensor is an important and practical device with a wide application in environmental protection field and biomedical industries. An efficient way to enhance the practicability of intelligent polymer composed pH sensor is to subtilize the three-dimensional microstructure of the materials, adding measurable features to visualize the output signal. In this work, C. rubi wing scales were combined with pH-responsive smart polymer polymethylacrylic acid (PMAA) through polymerization to achieve a colour-tunable pH sensor with nature gyroid structure. Morphology and reflection characteristics of the novel composites, named G-PMAA, are carefully investigated and compared with the original biotemplate, C. rubi wing scales. The most remarkable property of G-PMAA is a single-value corresponding relationship between pH value and the reflection peak wavelength (λ), with a colour distinction degree of 18 nm/pH, ensuring the accuracy and authenticity of the output. The pH sensor reported here is totally reversible, which is able to show the same results after several detection circles. Besides, G-PMAA is proved to be not influenced by the detection angle, which makes it a promising pH sensor with superb sensitivity, stability, and angle-independence.
pH 传感器是一种重要且实用的设备，在环境保护领域和生物医学工业中有广泛的应用。提高智能聚合物组成的 pH 传感器实用性的一种有效方法是细化材料的三维微观结构，为可视化输出信号添加可测量的特征。在这项工作中，我们将红树莓翅鳞片与 pH 响应智能聚合物聚甲基丙烯酸（PMAA）通过聚合结合，实现了具有天然螺旋结构的可调谐 pH 传感器。我们仔细研究了新型复合材料 G-PMAA 的形貌和反射特性，并将其与原始生物模板红树莓翅鳞片进行了比较。G-PMAA 最显著的特性是 pH 值与反射峰波长（λ）之间存在单一对应关系，其颜色区分度为 18nm/pH，保证了输出的准确性和真实性。这里报道的 pH 传感器是完全可逆的，经过几次检测循环后可以显示相同的结果。此外，G-PMAA 被证明不受检测角度的影响，这使其成为一种具有超高灵敏度、稳定性和角度独立性的有前途的 pH 传感器。
