Optical carbon dioxide sensor based on fluorescent capillary array

A novel carbon dioxide (CO2) gas sensor based on capillary array is presented. The capillary array is composed of 51 capillaries and modified by fluorescent dye 8-hydroxy-1,3,6-pyrenetrisulfonic acid trisodium salt (HPTS, PTS−) and tetraoctylammonium cation (TOA+) doped porous ethyl cellulose. A Y-fiber is used to transmit exciting light and fluorescence. A fiber optic pigtail-contained spectrophotometer is used to collect and deal with optical signals. Due to its structural features, each capillary has the two rolling-up layers of inner and outer sensing films, which make the 2 cm long capillary array has large sensing area about 12.81 cm2 and the fluorescence signal easily be collected. The sensing probe has advantages such as small volume, compact structure and large sensing area. The results demonstrate that the sensor has a linear response in the CO2 volume ratio range from 0 to 10%.