Development of Chemical Sensors Based on Encapsulated Small Particles

Sentor Technologies in collaboration with Virginia Commonwealth University proposes to develop a new chemical sensor technology based on encapsulated micro or nano-scale particles. The core of the particles will consist of a material that undergoes aspecific property change (e.g. color, refractive index) upon exposure to a vapor of interest. The outer shell of the particles will consist of a new molecularly imprinted polymeric material exhibiting controlled molecular-scale porosity. The shell actsas a filter and is designed to preferentially pass vapors within a particular molecular size range. Vapor detection and identification is accomplished by observing the sequence of property (say color) changes in an array of particle collections, eachimprinted for a specific molecular size range. The core property change will signal the presence of a vapor. The specific sequence will be unique to each vapor of interest. If successful, the propsed miniature chemical sensor technology could provide thegovernment and commercial sector with a portable, low cost sensor with performance parameters far superior to existing technologies.