A simple and disposable carbon adhesive tape-based NO₂ gas sensor

Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) is one of the toxic gas that causes debilitating disease in the respiratory system. Due to imprudent industrial development, the need for a facile and sensitive gas detection has been grown. Here, we develop a simple and disposable NO₂ gas sensor employing carbon adhesive tape (CAT) as the gas detection element. The CAT developed in this study contained a large amount of carbon black material to adsorb NO₂ gas molecules. Experiments revealed that the gas molecules were bound rapidly to the CAT sensor (<3 min). The chemical and physical characteristics of the CAT were investigated by thermal gravimetric analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. With increases of bound NO₂ gas molecules, electrical conductance was augmented. Analytical sensitivity of the CAT-based gas sensor was estimated to be 5 ppm, lower than the concentration generally considered as a minimum concentration to cause harm to people. In addition, we tested such CAT sensor for detecting NO_x from car exhaust, suggesting the possibility of its practical application. Taken together, our results indicate that CAT-based gas sensor developed in this study is applicable as a robust, facile, and disposable NO₂ gas sensing platform.