Recently, gas sensing technologies have gained renewed interest due to increasing threats of harmful volatile organic compounds and gases discharged by chemical industries, laboratories, etc. Moreover, some volatile organic compounds serve as biomarkers to identify acute diseases like lung cancer, diabetes, etc. For instance, the acetone concentration in a healthy person’s exhaled breath is less than one ppm. However, if acetone concentration is more significant than two ppm, it may lead to diabetic tendencies. Hence, detecting low ppm concentration acetone in a person’s exhaled breath would be promising for a non-invasive diagnosis of diabetes. Like acetone, Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a by-product of the oxidation reaction of nitrogen in power generating sources, industrial processes, fossil fuel combustion, and automotive engines. NO2 gas is quite harmful and has a short-term exposure limit of 1 ppm. Overexposure to NO2 gas leads to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. For a healthy environment, it is necessary to develop self-sustainable self-powering gas sensors sensitive to hazardous gas to control pollutants and take required preventive measures. In this context, the present project objective is to fabricate self-powered sensors utilizing the light-harvesting functionality of perovskites and metal oxides for real-time applications.
Department of Sciences, School of Physical Sciences, Coimbatore
Associate Professor
Department of Physics, School of Engineering, Coimbatore