A Highly Sensitive Device for the Determination of Ozone based on Glass Optical Waveguide

Abstract

Ozone is a multi-purpose gas and is widely applied to the industry and agriculture. However, ozone gas in the living environment is harmful to human body. The concentration of ozone gas in workplace environment is limited to below 100 ppb in many countries. At present ozone sensors are expensive, cumbersome and incapable of detecting ppb-level ozone. Here, we report an optical waveguide (OWG) for the determination ozone, which is based on evanescent field adsorption for detection of ozone gas (oxidant) in air. The highly sensitive element of this sensor is a starch-potassium iodide film/K⁺ ion exchanged glass OWG, fabricated by coating the starch-potassium iodide film over the potassium ion exchanged glass OWG. The low cost and reproducible fabrications make the sensor applicable to be disposable. The device has a short response time, highly sensitive, and detection limit is 10 ppb.