Triple Oleylamine Capped WS2 Sensor Array for Room Temperature Discrimination of Chemical Vapours

A set of three sensors based only on oleylamine capped tungsten disulphide nanoflowers was developed to discriminate between vapours of ammonia and volatile organic compounds at room temperature. The petals disassembled gradually because of reaction time manipulation during colloidal synthesis. It is these slight changes in the morphology that brought about different responses by the sensors upon exposure to the various chemical vapours. The responses of the sensors were used in the tristimulus analysis to find a pattern (fingerprint) for each target analyte making identification possible. These results present a step in the right direction towards overcoming the low specificity disadvantage associated with the chemical sensors thereby increasing their spectrum of possible applications.