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 NOx 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.