Synergistic improvement of gas sensing performance by micro-gravimetrically extracted kinetic/thermodynamic parameters

Highlights: • Sensing material can be comprehensively optimized by using gravimetric cantilever. • Kinetic-thermodynamic model parameters are quantitatively extracted by experiment • Sensing-material performance is synergistically optimized by extracted parameters. - Abstract: A novel method is explored for comprehensive design/optimization of organophosphorus sensing material, which is loaded on mass-type microcantilever sensor. Conventionally, by directly observing the gas sensing response, it is difficult to build quantitative relationship with the intrinsic structure of the material. To break through this difficulty, resonant cantilever is employed as gravimetric tool to implement molecule adsorption experiment. Based on the sensing data, key kinetic/thermodynamic parameters of the material to the molecule, including adsorption heat −ΔH°, adsorption/desorption rate constants K_a and K_d, active-site number per unit mass N′ and surface coverage θ, can be quantitatively extracted according to physical–chemistry theories. With gaseous DMMP (simulant of organophosphorus agents) as sensing target, the optimization route for three sensing materials is successfully demonstrated. Firstly, a hyper-branched polymer is evaluated. Though suffering low sensitivity due to insufficient N′, the bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)-hexafluoropropane (BHPF) sensing-group exhibits satisfactory reproducibility due to appropriate −ΔH°. To achieve more sensing-sites, KIT-5 mesoporous-silica with higher surface-area is assessed, resulting in good sensitivity but too high −ΔH° that brings poor repeatability. After comprehensive consideration, the confirmed BHPF sensing-group is grafted on the KIT-5 carrier to form an optimized DMMP sensing nanomaterial. Experimental results indicate that, featuring appropriate kinetic/thermodynamic parameters of −ΔH°, K_a, K_d, N′ and θ, the BHPF-functionalized KIT-5 mesoporous silica exhibits synergistic improvement among reproducibility, sensitivity and response/recovery speed. The optimized material shows complete signal recovery, 55% sensitivity improvement than the hyper-branched polymer and 2 ∼ 3 folds faster response/recovery speed than the KIT-5 mesoporous silica