Micro-nanotechnologies for monitoring of greenhouse gases

PED-2019 Contract nr. 308/03.08.2020

SUMMARY

The project scope is the development of a new technology for monitoring the greenhouse gases using newly designed sensors array.

For this purpose, an array of microsensors using miniaturized, alumina-based transducers will be used. The target gases in this project, considered as main contributors to the greenhouse effect, will be methane (CH4), ozone (O3), carbon dioxide (CO2), as well as humidity (water vapor). The microtransducers are made up of alumina µ-chips with interdigitated gold electrodes on top (front side of the transducer) and platinum microheater on the backside of the transducer. The microsensors array will contain metal oxides (MOx) sensitive films based sensors, as SnO2, ZnO, SnO2-ZnO, CuO and polymers deposited by safe and low-cost chemical routes (sol-gel method), as well as green approaches such as hydrothermal method, which involves low reaction temperatures. As precursors, accessible materials and environmentally friendly solvents will be used as new sensitive materials, one of the purposes being to obtain chemical compounds with reduced toxicity. These highly sensitive materials exhibiting features as favorable morphologies (i.e. nanowires, nanorods, nanosheets), large specific surface areas, high sensitivity and small production costs, will be deposited on the interdigitated gold electrodes (IDE). The sensitive materials can be improved by controlling the material design at nanometric level by controlled porosity and morphology. Another key element will be the use of new technologies for the manufacture of microsensors with low energy consumption. For this purpose, newly designed thin alumina substrates will be modelled and manufactured.

The sensors will be connected to a portable electronic module for data acquisition, display and further WiFi data transmission.