The research group, led by Professor Hiroshi Mizuta, who holds a joint appointment at the University of Southampton and JAIST, and Dr Jian Sun and assistant professor Manoharan Muruganathan of JAIST, developed the sensor to detect the adsorbtion of individual CO2 molecules onto graphene.
By monitoring the electrical resistance of the graphene, the adsorption and desorption (whereby a substance is released from or through a surface) processes of individual CO2 molecules onto the graphene was detected as ‘quantised’ changes in resistance. According to the team, CO2 with a concentration of 30parts per billion was detected within a few minutes.
Professor Mizuta said: “In contrast to commercially available environmental monitoring tools, this extreme sensing technology enables us to realise significant miniaturisation, resulting in weight and cost reduction in addition to the remarkable improvement in the detection limit from the ppm levels to the ppb levels.”
