Sensitivity of resorcinarene films towards aliphatic alcohols

This paper reports on binding properties of fictionalized resorcin[4]arenes towards the range of aliphatic alcohols (from methanol to pentanol). Sensor properties were examined with an eight-channel gas sensing system based on a Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) technique. The kinetics of binding, sensitivity and detection limit has been studied. Correlation between sensing properties and the number of carbon atoms in the aliphatic resorcinarene chains has been revealed with the maximal response observed for the middle length of the chains. The detection limit achieved in our experiments was about 1000 ppm for methanol and less than 50 ppm for pentanol.