Abstract
We developed a molecular-recognition material of low-molecular-weight organic compounds by using mesoporous silicas, and applied this material to a chemical sensor, aiming at the development of new and practical analytical techniques. We have found that it is important to determine the optimized surface condition and the porosity of mesoporous silicas to compare very similar molecules, namely benzene and toluene, which have no and one methyl group, respectively, in their molecular structures. We applied mesoporous silica to a micro gas-sensing system, which has been originally developed. We succeeded to detect benzene gas at ppm levels in car exhausts containing interference components. We also found that mesoporpos silica is an excellent optical material in the terahertz region, and we developed a useful way for terahertz time- domain spectroscopy to distinguish between intra- and intermolecular modes by incorporating target molecules in nano-sized spaces of nanoporous materials.
