Université de Haute-Alsace , CNRS, IS2M UMR 7361, F-68100 Mulhouse , France.
Université de Strasbourg , 4 rue Blaise Pascal CS 90032 , F-67081 Strasbourg cedex, France.
ACS Sens. 2019 Apr 26;4(4):1023-1031. doi: 10.1021/acssensors.9b00223. Epub 2019 Apr 1.
Point-of-care (POC) application for monitoring of breath ammonia (BA) in hemodialysis (HD) patients has emerged as a promising noninvasive health monitoring approach. In this context, many organic gas sensors have been reported for BA detection. However, one of the major challenges for its integration with affordable household POC application is to achieve stable performance for accuracy and high operational current at low voltage for low-cost read-out circuitry. Herein, we exploited the stability of the Donor-Acceptor polymer on the cylindrical nanopore structure to realize the sensors with a high sensitivity and stability. Then, we proposed a double active layer (DL) strategy that exploits an ultrathin layer of Poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl) (P3HT) to serve as a work function buffer to enhance the operational current. The DL sensor exhibits a sustainable enhanced operational current of microampere level and a stable sensing response even with the presence of P3HT layer. This effect is carefully examined with different aspects, including vertical composition profile of DL configuration, lifetime testing on different sensing layer, morphological analysis, and the versatility of the DL strategy. Finally, we utilize the DL sensor to conduct a tracing of BA concentration in two HD patients before and after HD, and correlate it with the blood urea nitrogen (BUN) levels. A good correlation coefficient of 0.96 is achieved. Moreover, the feasibility of DL sensor integrated into a low-cost circuitry was also verified. The results demonstrate the potential of this DL strategy to be used to integrate organic sensor for affordable household POC devices.
即时检测 (POC) 应用于监测血液透析 (HD) 患者的呼吸氨 (BA) 已成为一种很有前途的非侵入性健康监测方法。在这种情况下，已经有许多有机气体传感器被报道用于 BA 检测。然而，将其与经济实惠的家庭 POC 应用集成的主要挑战之一是在低电压下实现高精度和高工作电流的稳定性能，以用于低成本读出电路。在此，我们利用供体-受体聚合物在圆柱形纳米孔结构上的稳定性，实现了具有高灵敏度和稳定性的传感器。然后，我们提出了一种双层活性层 (DL) 策略，利用超薄的聚(3-己基噻吩-2,5-二基) (P3HT) 层作为功函数缓冲层来增强工作电流。DL 传感器表现出可持续的增强微安级工作电流和稳定的传感响应，即使存在 P3HT 层也是如此。我们从不同方面仔细研究了这种效应，包括 DL 配置的垂直组成剖面、不同传感层的寿命测试、形态分析以及 DL 策略的多功能性。最后，我们利用 DL 传感器在 HD 治疗前后对两名 HD 患者的 BA 浓度进行追踪，并将其与血液尿素氮 (BUN) 水平相关联。获得了 0.96 的良好相关系数。此外，还验证了将 DL 传感器集成到低成本电路中的可行性。结果表明，该 DL 策略具有将有机传感器集成到经济实惠的家庭 POC 设备中的潜力。
