Active Self-Assembled Monolayer Sensors for Trace Explosive Detection

Mingliang Li; Hongliang Chen; Shuo Li; Guozhi Wang; Feng Wei; Xuefeng Guo; Hailing Tu

doi:10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b03742

Active Self-Assembled Monolayer Sensors for Trace Explosive Detection

Langmuir. 2020 Feb 18;36(6):1462-1466. doi: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b03742. Epub 2020 Feb 7.

Authors

Mingliang Li^{1

2}, Hongliang Chen³, Shuo Li^{1

2}, Guozhi Wang^{1

2}, Feng Wei^{1

2}, Xuefeng Guo^{4

5}, Hailing Tu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ GRIMAT Engineering Institute Co., Ltd , Beijing 101407 , P. R. China.
² State Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials for Smart Sensing , General Research Institute for Nonferrous Metals , Beijing 100088 , P. R. China.
³ Department of Chemistry , Northwestern University , 2145 Sheridan Road , Evanston , Illinois 60208 , United States.
⁴ Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, State Key Laboratory for Structural Chemistry of Unstable and Stable Species, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering , Peking University , Beijing 100871 , P. R. China.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering , Peking University , Beijing 100871 , P. R. China.

PMID: 31986886
DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b03742

Abstract

Trace explosives can be detected with the help of a portable device using a flexible active self-assembled monolayer (SAM). 9,10-diphenyl anthracene with aggregation-induced emission enhancement (AIEE) properties is selected as the fluorophore. Phosphoric acid as the anchor group is linked to the fluorophore through an alkyl chain and able to self-assemble into a dense monolayer on the HfO₂ adhesion layer on a flexible substrate. The dense SAMs show high fluorescence intensity, which can be quenched by nitroaromatic compounds (NACs), and have advantages of high response rate, sensitivity, reversibility, and selectivity.