1 research outputs found
Humidity-Responsive Gold Aerogel for Real-Time Monitoring of Human Breath
Humidity sensors
have received considerable attention in recent
years because of their significance and wide applications in agriculture,
industries, goods stores, and medical fields. However, the conventional
humidity sensors usually possessed a complex sensing mechanism and
low sensitivity and required a time-consuming, labor-intensive process.
The exploration for an ideal sensing material to amplify the sensitivity
of humidity sensors is still a big challenge. Herein, we developed
a simple, low-cost, and scalable fabrication strategy to construct
a highly sensitive humidity sensor based on polymer/gold nanoparticle
(AuNP) hybrid materials. The hybrid polymer/AuNP aerogel was prepared
by a simple freeze-drying method. By taking advantage of the conductivity
of AuNPs and high surface area of the highly porous structure, the
hybrid poly-<i>N</i>-isopropylacrylamide (PNIPAm)/AuNP aerogel
showed high sensitivity to water molecules. Interestingly, the hybrid
PNIPAm/AuNP aerogel-based humidity sensor can be used to detect human
breath in different states, such as normal breath, fast breath, and
deep breath, or in different individuals such as persons with illness,
persons who are smoking, and persons who are normal, which is promising
in practical flexible wearable devices for human health monitoring.
In addition, the humidity sensor can be used in whistle tune recognition