title: An electrochemical gas sensor based on paper supported room temperature ionic liquids.
abstract: A sensitive and fast-responding membrane-free amperometric gas sensor is described, consisting of a small filter paper foil soaked with a room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL), upon which three electrodes are screen printed with carbon ink, using a suitable mask. It takes advantage of the high electrical conductivity and negligible vapour pressure of RTILs as well as their easy immobilization into a porous and inexpensive supporting material such as paper. Moreover, thanks to a careful control of the preparation procedure, a very close contact between the RTIL and electrode material can be achieved so as to allow gaseous analytes to undergo charge transfer just as soon as they reach the three-phase sites where the electrode material, paper supported RTIL and gas phase meet. Thus, the adverse effect on recorded currents of slow steps such as analyte diffusion and dissolution in a solvent is avoided. To evaluate the performance of this device, it was used as a wall-jet amperometric detector for flow injection analysis of 1-butanethiol vapours, adopted as the model gaseous analyte, present in headspace samples in equilibrium with aqueous solutions at controlled concentrations. With this purpose, the RTIL soaked paper electrochemical detector (RTIL-PED) was assembled by using 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide as the wicking RTIL and printing the working electrode with carbon ink doped with cobalt(II) phthalocyanine, to profit from its ability to electrocatalyze thiol oxidation. The results obtained were quite satisfactory (detection limit: 0.5 μM; dynamic range: 2-200 μM, both referring to solution concentrations; correlation coefficient: 0.998; repeatability: ±7% RSD; long-term stability: 9%), thus suggesting the possible use of this device for manifold applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Food Science, University of Udine, via Cotonificio 108, I-33100 Udine, Italy.
authors.forename: Nicolò
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dossi
authors.forename: Rosanna
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Toniolo
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pizzariello
authors.forename: Emanuel
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Carrilho
authors.forename: Evandro
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Piccin
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Battiston
authors.forename: Gino
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bontempelli
mesh_terms: D002197:Capillary Action; D004553:Electric Conductivity; D055664:Electrochemical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D004566:Electrodes; D017022:Flow Injection Analysis; D005740:Gases / Q000032:analysis*; D007093:Imidazoles / Q000737:chemistry; D052578:Ionic Liquids / Q000737:chemistry*; D057230:Limit of Detection; D008956:Models, Chemical; D010209:Paper; D011312:Pressure; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013438:Sulfhydryl Compounds / Q000032:analysis; D013696:Temperature
chemical_list: C525963:1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium; D005740:Gases; D007093:Imidazoles; D052578:Ionic Liquids; D013438:Sulfhydryl Compounds; C025540:n-butyl mercaptan