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Explosives Detection in Sea Water with Phthalocyanine Quartz Crystal Microbalance Sensors

2011; American Scientific Publishers; Volume: 9; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1166/sl.2011.1607

1546-198X

Dilek D. Erbahar, İlke Gürol, Vefa Ahsen, Zafer Ziya Öztürk, Emel Musluoǧlu, Mika Harbeck,

Acoustic Wave Resonator Technologies

Department of Physics, Gebze Institute of Technology, P. O. Box 141, 41400 Gebze - Kocaeli, Turkey(Received:9July2010.Accepted:11November2010)Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) based chemical sensor systems are of high interest as ananalysis method for direct chemical pollution assessment of natural waters or effluents from pollutedsites. In this work, QCM sensors with selected phthalocyanines (Pcs) as sensitive materials areproposed for the direct detection and classification of explosives such as 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT)and 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazinane (RDX) contained in aqueous samples. The sensors are found tobe very sensitive especially to TNT having sensitivities as high as 100 Hz/ppm and detection limitsin the low parts-per-billion range for this explosive. The results were verified with sea water samples.The sensors maintain their excellent sensing properties and are capable of reliable quantificationdown to low parts-per-million levels. Finally, the variations in the sensing properties among the Pcs,differing mainly in their metal centers, are explored using principal component analysis in regard tothe classification capabilities of a sensor array.