Most of us live in large cities where air is polluted with a variety of toxic compounds. It is known that the levels of these gasses are much higher in specific regions within a city and people who spend more of their time there, will have a drastically shorter life expectancy. The sad thing is that in most cases humans cannot even smell these compounds to avoid danger. But what if you could actually map the levels of these gasses and use „green routes“ in a city to minimize your exposure to toxic gasses?
The researchers of the Laboratory of Sensor Technologies and the Laboratory of Thin Film Technology at the Institute of Physics, University of Tartu try to solve this problem with novel graphene-based gas sensors, that can be integrated into mobile phones, bikes, cars or even clothes. By constantly monitoring the levels of those gasses, a real-time map is created that shows the levels of toxic gasses in a city and that map can be used by citizens to find the green routes. Furthermore, real-time monitoring of toxic gasses also allows to spot most critical pollutants and deal with the problem right away.
This important research is being carried out under the Graphene Flagship project funded by the European Union and so far the studies and developed prototypes have proven to be quite promising. Perhaps this technology can be used already within our own lifetime, where all new phones would have an integrated „smart electronic nose“ to sniff the air around us and help us make the world a better place.
If you want to learn more about this topic and find out how these novel sensors are actually made, then be sure to check out the video that we made to promote this research!
