Indoor air quality monitoring system based on polymer/functionalized-SWNT gas sensors

Recently, people pay more attention to healthy living conditions. Such changing lifestyle leads to demand for wearable health monitoring, new medical technology, healthy food and clean air. Thus, indoor air monitoring and control will be an emerging industry with a huge market size. In this paper, we have developed an indoor air monitoring system with ability to observe volatile contaminants, especially related to household origin. This system consists of an array of chemical gas sensor based on polymer/functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) with ability to detect different gases. A microcontroller was used for data processing and alarming when the concentration of a target gas becomes danger. This system was developed based on consumer-friendly having a compact size and using low-cost technologies. From the experiment, it was demonstrated that such indoor air monitoring device provides an ability to detect contaminated gases in ambient air. The results imply a possibility appropriate for indoor air monitoring in general home and even in factory as well.