Luong Hoang Mai, Pham Minh Thien, Guin Tyler, Madhogaria Richa Pokharel, Phan Manh-Huong, Larsen George Keefe, Nguyen Tho Duc
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA.
National Security Directorate, Savannah River National Laboratory, Aiken, SC, USA.
Nat Commun. 2021 Apr 23;12(1):2414. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-22697-w.
The use of hydrogen as a clean and renewable alternative to fossil fuels requires a suite of flammability mitigating technologies, particularly robust sensors for hydrogen leak detection and concentration monitoring. To this end, we have developed a class of lightweight optical hydrogen sensors based on a metasurface of Pd nano-patchy particle arrays, which fulfills the increasing requirements of a safe hydrogen fuel sensing system with no risk of sparking. The structure of the optical sensor is readily nano-engineered to yield extraordinarily rapid response to hydrogen gas (<3 s at 1 mbar H) with a high degree of accuracy (<5%). By incorporating 20% Ag, Au or Co, the sensing performances of the Pd-alloy sensor are significantly enhanced, especially for the PdCo sensor whose optical response time at 1 mbar of H is just ~0.85 s, while preserving the excellent accuracy (<2.5%), limit of detection (2.5 ppm), and robustness against aging, temperature, and interfering gases. The superior performance of our sensor places it among the fastest and most sensitive optical hydrogen sensors.
将氢气用作化石燃料的清洁可再生替代品，需要一系列减轻可燃性的技术，特别是用于氢气泄漏检测和浓度监测的坚固传感器。为此，我们基于钯纳米片状颗粒阵列的超表面开发了一类轻质光学氢气传感器，满足了安全氢气燃料传感系统日益增长的需求，且不存在火花风险。该光学传感器的结构易于通过纳米工程实现，对氢气具有极快的响应速度（在1毫巴氢气下<3秒），精度很高（<5%）。通过掺入20%的银、金或钴，钯合金传感器的传感性能显著增强，特别是钯钴传感器，其在1毫巴氢气下的光学响应时间仅约0.85秒，同时保持了出色的精度（<2.5%）、检测限（2.5 ppm）以及对老化、温度和干扰气体的耐受性。我们传感器的卓越性能使其跻身最快、最灵敏的光学氢气传感器之列。
