Localized Collection of Airborne Analytes: A Transport Driven Approach to Improve the Response Time of Existing Gas Sensor Designs

The desire to detect and identify trace amounts of airborne analytes, including combustible or toxic gases, small molecules, particles, viruses or bacteria with ever increasing sensitivity and selectivity continues to be one of the main drivers in sensor research. [ 1–3 ] While the variety of sensing principles continues to grow, most principles share a common feature which is the requirement that the analyte adsorbs on the sensor surface or interacts chemically or physically with the sensing element for signal transduction to take place. For example, adsorption and analyte interaction is critical in sensors that use an electrochemically active surface, [ 4 ] surface catalysis, [ 5 ] a mesoporous metal-semiconductor-metal network, [ 6 ]