Transient Electrochemical Multi-Component Gas Sensors(I)

The currently popular electrochemical gas sensors are mostly steady with regard to their operating state. As a result, the further improvement of sensor characteristics is restricted by such a “steady state”. Based on the thin-layer electrochemistry principle, a kind of allnew transient electrochemical multi-component gas sensor－－“porous thin-layer electrode coulometric gas sensor” has been designed and constructed with a hydrophobic thin-layer gasd iff using electrode. The response of such gas sensors is a transient peaked current signal, and the total amount of charge consumed in the exhaustive electrolysis of a solution confined in the thin layer is proportional to the concentration of the species monitored. As compared with conventional steady electrochemical gas sensors, the transient electrochemical multi-component gas sensors exhibited fast sampling rate, lower temperature coefficient of the calibration curves,higher sensitivity and good stability, as illustrated by the case of detection of anaesthetic ()2+N2O gas mixtures.