Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Nov 13;10(11):2251.
doi: 10.3390/nano10112251.

Nanomaterial-Based CO2 Sensors

Marwan Y Rezk  1 , Jyotsna Sharma  1 , Manas Ranjan Gartia  2
Affiliations
Review

Nanomaterial-Based CO2 Sensors

Marwan Y Rezk et al. Nanomaterials (Basel). .

Abstract

The detection of carbon dioxide (CO2) is critical for environmental monitoring, chemical safety control, and many industrial applications. The manifold application fields as well as the huge range of CO2 concentration to be measured make CO2 sensing a challenging task. Thus, the ability to reliably and quantitatively detect carbon dioxide requires vastly improved materials and approaches that can work under different environmental conditions. Due to their unique favorable chemical, optical, physical, and electrical properties, nanomaterials are considered state-of-the-art sensing materials. This mini-review documents the advancement of nanomaterial-based CO2 sensors in the last two decades and discusses their strengths, weaknesses, and major applications. The use of nanomaterials for CO2 sensing offers several improvements in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, response time, and detection, demonstrating the advantage of using nanomaterials for developing high-performance CO2 sensors. Anticipated future trends in the area of nanomaterial-based CO2 sensors are also discussed in light of the existing limitations.

Keywords: CO2 monitoring; gas sensing; nanomaterials.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sensing mechanism of electrochemical CO2 sensors via different nanomaterials.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) Humidity inhibits sensor’s response (modified from [49]), (b) humidity enhances sensor’s response using LaOCl by two different synthesis techniques sample A (simple oxidation)–sample B (sol-gel) (modified from [48]).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mechanism of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) nanomaterial sensing for CO2 (modified from Patil et al., 2019 [69]).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Schematic of colorimetric CO2 sensing. The pH change can be observed on the litmus paper or in the cuvette where the intensity is measured via UV-Vis spectroscopy.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Quantum dots’ (QDs) response to CO2 sensing based on size, wavelength, and energy.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The use of nanomaterials thin film in fiber optics.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Schematic of non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) CO2 sensing with potential nanomaterial integration.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Möller D., Decker M., Zosel J., Oelßner W. Carbon Dioxide Sensing Fundamentals, Principles, and Applications. Wiley-VCH; Weinheim, Germany: 2019. Carbon dioxide in general; pp. 39–40.
    1. CO2 and Ocean Acidification: Causes, Impacts, Solutions. [(accessed on 9 July 2020)]; Available online: https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/co2-and-ocean-acidification.
    1. Bezzon V.D.N., Montanheiro T.L.A., Menezes B.R.C.D., Ribas R.G., Righetti V.A.N., Rodrigues K.F., Thim G.P. Carbon Nanostructure-based Sensors: A Brief Review on Recent Advances. Adv. Mater. Sci. Eng. 2019;2019:1–21. doi: 10.1155/2019/4293073. - DOI
    1. Starecki F., Charpentier F., Doualan J.-L., Quetel L., Michel K., Chahal R., Troles J., Bureau B., Braud A., Camy P., et al. Mid-IR optical sensor for CO2 detection based on fluorescence absorbance of Dy3+: Ga5Ge20Sb10S65 fibers. Sens. Actuators B Chem. 2015;207:518–525. doi: 10.1016/j.snb.2014.10.011. - DOI
    1. Liu L., Morgan S.P., Correia R., Lee S.-W., Korposh S. Multi-Parameter Optical Fiber Sensing of Gaseous Ammonia and Carbon Dioxide. J. Light. Technol. 2020;38:2037–2045. doi: 10.1109/JLT.2019.2953271. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources