A kinetic model of thin-film fluorescent sensors for strategies to enhance chemical selectivity

Estimation of Environmental Effects and Response Time in Gas-Phase Explosives Detection Using Photoluminescence Quenching Method

Detecting the presence of explosives is important to protect human lives during military conflicts and peacetime. Gas-phase detection of explosives can make use of the change of material properties, which can be sensitive to environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. This paper describes a remote-controlled automatic shutter method for the environmental impact assessment of photoluminescence (PL) sensors under near-open conditions. Utilizing the remote-sensing method, we obtained environmental effects without being exposed to sensing vapor molecules and explained how PL intensity was influenced by the temperature, humidity, and exposure time. We also developed a theoretical model including the effect of exciton diffusion for PL quenching, which worked well under limited molecular diffusions. Incomplete recovery of PL intensity or the degradation effect was considered as an additional factor in the model.

Thermal control of organic semiconductors for trace detection of explosives

Organic semiconductors can be applied as ultra-sensitive fluorescent sensors for detecting trace vapours of explosives. The detection of explosives is manifest by the fluorescence quenching of the sensors. However, for many organic fluorescent sensors, the fluorescence quenching is irreversible and imposes a limitation in terms of reusability. Here we present a study of the thermal control of thin-film fluorescent sensors made from the commercial fluorescent polymer Super Yellow (SY). Thermal control of the sensor's temperature results in the desorption of the absorbed analytes, nitroaromatic explosives (2,4-DNT and DNB), and a taggant molecule (DMDNB). The amount of photoluminescence (PL) quenching and the desorption temperature of analytes provides a route to discriminate between the analytes, and additonally make the SY sensors reusable.

Optimizing the Properties of La0.8Sr0.2CrO3 Thin Films through Post-Annealing for High-Temperature Sensing

La_0.8Sr_0.2CrO₃ (0.2LSCO) thin films were prepared via the RF sputtering method to fabricate thin-film thermocouples (TFTCs), and post-annealing processes were employed to optimize their properties to sense high temperatures. The XRD patterns of the 0.2LSCO thin films showed a pure phase, and their crystallinities increased with the post-annealing temperature from 800 °C to 1000 °C, while some impurity phases of Cr₂O₃ and SrCr₂O₇ were observed above 1000 °C. The surface images indicated that the grain size increased first and then decreased, and the maximum size was 0.71 μm at 1100 °C. The cross-sectional images showed that the thickness of the 0.2LSCO thin films decreased significantly above 1000 °C, which was mainly due to the evaporation of Sr²⁺ and Cr³⁺. At the same time, the maximum conductivity was achieved for the film annealed at 1000 °C, which was 6.25 × 10⁻² S/cm. When the thin films post-annealed at different temperatures were coupled with Pt reference electrodes to form TFTCs, the trend of output voltage to first increase and then decrease was observed, and the maximum average Seebeck coefficient of 167.8 µV/°C was obtained for the 0.2LSCO thin film post-annealed at 1100 °C. Through post-annealing optimization, the best post-annealing temperature was 1000 °C, which made the 0.2LSCO thin film more stable to monitor the temperatures of turbine engines for a long period of time.