Laser chemosensor with rapid responsivity and inherent memory based on a polymer of intrinsic microporosity
Abstract
This work explores the use of a polymer of intrinsic microporosity (PIM-1) as the active layer within a laser sensor to detect nitroaromatic-based explosive vapors. We show successful detection of dinitrobenzene (DNB) by monitoring the real-time photoluminescence. We also show that PIM-1 has an inherent memory, so that it accumulates the analyte during exposure. In addition, the optical gain and refractive index of the polymer were studied by amplified spontaneous emission and variable-angle ellipsometry, respectively. A second-order distributed feedback PIM-1 laser sensor was fabricated and found to show an increase in laser threshold of 2.5 times and a reduction of the laser slope efficiency by 4.4 times after a 5-min exposure to the DNB vapor. For pumping at 2 times threshold, the lasing action was stopped within 30 s indicating that PIM-1 has a very fast responsivity and as such has a potential sensing ability for ultra-low-concentration explosives.
Citation
Wang , Y , McKeown , N B , Msayib , K J , Turnbull , G A & Samuel , I D W 2011 , ' Laser chemosensor with rapid responsivity and inherent memory based on a polymer of intrinsic microporosity ' , Sensors , vol. 11 , no. 3 , pp. 2478-2487 . https://doi.org/10.3390/s110302478
Publication
Sensors
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1424-8220Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
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