Department of Chemical Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, 145 Xingda Road, Taichung City 40227, Taiwan.
Department of Civil Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, 145 Xingda Road, Taichung City 40227, Taiwan.
Sensors (Basel). 2020 Sep 25;20(19):5503. doi: 10.3390/s20195503.
Water-soluble chemicals, involving a wide range of toxic chemicals in aqueous solutions, remain essential in both daily living or industrial uses. However, most toxicants are evaporated with water through their use and thus cause deleterious effects on the domestic environment and health in humans. Unfortunately, most current low-dose chemical vapor detection technologies are restricted by the use of sophisticated instruments and unable to promptly detect the quantity of diverse toxicants in a single analysis. To address these issues, this study reports the development of simple and fast chemical vapor detection using doctor-blade-coated macroporous poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate)/poly(ethoxylated trimethylolpropane triacrylate) photonic crystals, in which the poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) has strong affinity to insecticide vapor owing to a favorable Gibbs free energy change for their mixing. The condensation of water-soluble chemical vapor therefore results in a significant reflection peak shift and an obvious color change. The visual colorimetric readout can be further improved by increasing the lattice spacing of the macroporous photonic crystals. Furthermore, the dependence of the reflection peak position on vapor pressure under actual conditions and the reproducibility of vapor detecting are also evaluated in this study.
水溶性化学物质，包括水溶液中的广泛范围的有毒化学物质，在日常生活或工业用途中仍然是必不可少的。然而，大多数有毒物质在使用过程中会随水蒸发，从而对家庭环境和人类健康造成有害影响。不幸的是，目前大多数低剂量化学蒸气检测技术受到复杂仪器的限制，无法在单次分析中及时检测出多种有毒物质的数量。为了解决这些问题，本研究报告了使用刮刀涂布的大孔聚（2-羟乙基甲基丙烯酸酯）/聚（乙氧基化三羟甲基丙烷三丙烯酸酯）光子晶体进行简单快速的化学蒸气检测的发展，其中聚（2-羟乙基甲基丙烯酸酯）由于其混合的吉布斯自由能变化有利于杀虫剂蒸气，因此对杀虫剂蒸气具有很强的亲和力。因此，水溶性化学蒸气的凝结会导致明显的反射峰位移和颜色变化。通过增加大孔光子晶体的晶格间距，可以进一步提高可见比色读数。此外，本研究还评估了实际条件下蒸气压力对反射峰位置的依赖性以及蒸气检测的重现性。
