Smart facemask for wireless CO2 monitoring

The use of facemasks by the general population is recommended worldwide to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Despite the evidence in favour of facemasks to reduce community transmission, there is also agreement on the potential adverse effects of their prolonged usage, mainly caused by CO2 rebreathing. Herein we report the development of a sensing platform for gaseous CO2 real-time determination inside FFP2 facemasks. The system consists of an opto-chemical sensor combined with a flexible, battery-less, near-field-enabled tag with resolution and limit of detection of 103 and 140 ppm respectively, and sensor lifetime of 8 h, which is comparable with recommended FFP2 facemask usage times. We include a custom smartphone application for wireless powering, data processing, alert management, results displaying and sharing. Through performance tests during daily activity and exercise monitoring, we demonstrate its utility for non-invasive, wearable health assessment and its potential applicability for preclinical research and diagnostics.

A prominent maximum in surface ozone concentration during winter months at Pune (India)

ABSTRACT. Concentration of ozone near the ground has been recorded at Pune (India) since 1972 with the help of a continuous surface ozone recorder using electro-chemical sensor. The analysis of the records of winter season indicates a sharp rise in ozone amount in the forenoon around 1000 to 1200 LST. Prior to 1985 this forenoon: higher value in surface ozone concentration was followed by another maximum in the afternoon hours coinciding with the maximum temperature epoch of the day. After 1985 the surface ozone data indicates that the forenoon peak value has become invariably higher than the afternoon value. Due to increasing concentration of anthropogenic gases in the atmosphere there is a possibility of photochemical production of ozone in the troposphere which may give rise to higher surface ozone values, when the meteorological conditions are favourable for the accumulation of such gases which are involved in ozone production.

A Fluorescence-Based Chemical Sensor for Detection of Melamine in Aqueous Solutions

Melamine, an industrial chemical, receives wide attention nowadays because of its unethical usage as a nitrogen enhancer in protein-rich foods and dairy products. Since most of the existing melamine detection methods are highly expensive and time-consuming, high sensitivity biosensor-based detection methods have arisen in the scientific literature as promising alternatives. This study reports the design, synthesis, and fluorescent investigations of a carbazole-based sensor (CB) for the detection of melamine in aqueous solutions. The titration studies and microplate experiments on a CB-cyanuric acid mixture (CB-CA) with melamine suggested that the novel sensor could detect melamine even at very low concentrations in both aqueous solutions and dairy samples.

Novel Metallochromic Hydrazone-Based Chemosensor Toward Colorimetric Paper Strip For Selective Detection Cu2+

A solid-state sensor was developed for the determination of copper ions (Cu2+) in aqueous media using tricyanofuranhydrazone as a spectroscopic probe and a paper sheet as the hosting strip. A new tricyanofuranhydrazone-based colorimetric chemosensor (TCFH) was synthesized for selective detection of Cu2+ in aqueous environments. The synthesis strategy of TCFH involved an azo-coupling process between the diazonium salt of 8-aminoquinoline and an active methyl-bearing tricyanofuran (TCF) heterocyclic moiety. The molecular structure of the prepared TCFH chemical sensor was verified with FT-IR, 1H and 13C NMR, as well as elemental analysis. Due to intramolecular charge transfer, TCFH chromophore demonstrated pronounced solvatochromism depending on the solvent polarity. Changes in both color and UV-vis absorption spectra demonstrated by the developed chemosensor proved that TCFH can be utilized to detect Cu2+ in the presence of other competing metallic cations and anions. The synthesized TCFH probe, which contains a hydrazone recognition moiety, demonstrates dramatic solvatochromic activity and high selectivity at the microlevel of copper ions with a color shift from yellow to purple. Mechanisms accounting for both metallochromic and solvatochromic activities were explored. Moreover, test strips of TCFH were successfully developed and applied for the detection of copper ions at different concentrations in aqueous media. The colorimetric properties of the prepared TCFH-immobilized paper strips were investigated by CIE Lab chromogenic parameters, colorimetric strength (K/S) and UV-Vis absorbance spectra. The metallochromic paper strip exhibited a detection limit at the ppm range. The best detection of Cu2+ was achieved in the pH range of 6.6-7.4 demonstrating an immediate color switch from yellow to purple relying on the total content of Cu2+. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was applied to characterize the deposition of tricyanofuranhydrazone onto the surface of the paper strip.

Sensitivity analysis for detecting chemicals by the optical chemical sensor based Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) in the Terahertz (THz) regime

This research article demonstrates a good simulation result for identifying and detecting various industrial chemicals in a Terahertz (THz) waveguide with a new heptagonal, five layers of heptagonal photonic fiber elliptic form, heptagonal clading shape (H-PCF). COMSOL 4.2 software based on finite element (FEM) methods and perfectly matched layers check our composition (PML). The different chemicals are also differentiated and identified by each other in different parameters H-PCF fibers show a high relative sensitivity of ethanol of approximately 86.50 percent after numerical analysis, Benzene around 89.35%, and water around 85.15% at a frequency of around 0.7 THz. In our experiment, we obtained very low confinement losses at 1 terahertz (THz) such as 5.95×10−08 dB/m for Ethanol 6.67×10−08 dB/m for Benzene, and 5.80×10−08 dB/m for water. Regarding these results, we can strongly recommend that our proposed heptagonal photonic crystal fiber (H-PCF) will be more congenial in biomedical, bio-medicine, and industrial areas for the identification and detection of various types of chemicals with the help of a THz waveguide.

Ru-decorated gallium nitride nanotubes as chemical sensor for detection of purinethol drug: a density functional theory study

We employed density functional B3LYP to inspect the impact of Ru-decoration on a GaN nanotube (GaNNT) sensing performance in detection of purinethol (PT) drug. The interaction of the pristine GaNNT with the PT was found to be weak, and the sensing response is 4.3. Decorating an Ru atom into the GaNNT surface increases the adsorption energy (Ead) of PT from -6.5 to -23.6 kcal/mol. The sensing response significantly rises to 93.6 by Ru-decoration. A short recovery time of 15.7 s is found for the PT desorption from the Ru-decorated GaNNT surface at 298 K. The water solvent reduces Ead of PT to -20.1 kcal/mol. Thus, it suggests that Ru-decorated GaNNT may be a highly sensitive PT sensor with a short recovery time.