Fabrication of Semiconductor Metal Oxide Based Gas Sensors for Breath Biopsy

Fabrication of Semiconductor Metal Oxide Based Gas Sensors for Breath Biopsy

Alp Kılıç 1, Onur Alev 1, Neslihan Sarıca 2, Serkan Büyükköse 1 and Zafer Ziya Öztürk 1

1. Gebze Technical University Department of Physics, 41400, Kocaeli, TURKEY
2. The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), Kocaeli, TURKEY

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Abstract:

Recently, breath biopsy has attracted much attention for disease monitoring due to its non-invasive and fast diagnostics ability. Breath biopsy has been realising by the evaluate of collected breath samples from human exhaled breath. Several substances in human exhaled breath are considered as biomarkers which are correlated to varying diseases such as ammonia (kidney disease), HCN (cystic fibrosis) or acetone (diabetes). To achieve accurate diagnosis, minimum detection limit for a sensor should be in the range of sub-ppm or ppb level for breath biopsy applications. Detection of these low concentrations is major challenge in development of a breath analyser system. The emphasis is placed on semiconductor metal oxide such as TiO2 and CuO based chemiresistive gas sensors to meet these requirements due to their adequate reaction with biomarkers.  
In our study, we hydrothermally fabricated the TiO2 and CuO nanorods as sensing layer and investigated their biomarker sensing properties. Biomarker sensing tests are carried out against acetone, ethanol, HCN and H2S in the gas concentration range of sub-ppm and ppb level at varying operation temperature. According to our biomarker sensing test results, we observed that TiO2 nanorods can be used to sense diabetes biomarker, acetone, with a concentration level of 0.45 ppm at 200Ëš C. Also, CuO nanorods sense 0.27 ppm HCN at 250Ëš C, which is a biomarker for cystic fibrosis. Both TiO2 and CuO based gas sensors are very good candidates for further sensor arrays (electronic nose) that use in breath biopsy applications to diagnose varying diseases.