Presentazione per invito a POLYMAR 2018 (Nanocomposite nanofibers in chemical sensors for air pollution)

Introduction. Environmental monitoring is a growing concern in both developed and non-developed countries across the globe, because of the strong impact of several anthropogenic activities on both human and planet health. Air quality monitoring, indoor and outdoor, is usually performed with specialized equipment and analytical methods by regulatory agencies and researchers. However, in order to obtain more realistic and continuous results on the situation of pollutants distribution, EU projects guidelines report the need to involve also To achieve this aim, novel sensors for environmental monitoring have been designed and developed to date to obtain reliable values comparable to those provided by standard methods and technologies. citizens in environmental monitoring, thus low-cost and easy-to-use technologies are required. Currently, electrospinning is considered as one of the most versatile and inexpensive manufacturing technologies to design and develop nanostructured sensors to detect gases and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the air. Sensors based on polymeric as well as metal-oxide fibers look extremely attractive for the low cost and great versatility of the raw materials that can be easily tunable, according to the transducer used and the application of interest, taking part to the resulting sensing features (selectivity and sensitivity). Experimental. The inclusion of variously working nanoparticles with different strategies of functionalization has allowed the sensors to achieve excellent performances under various points of view, ranging from robustness, to life-time, to sensitivity and selectivity. Results and Discussion. Thus optical and electrical features have been exploited to reveal traces of gas and pollutants in air by simply designing and using fast and cheap sensing devices. Conclusions. Some experiences will be here described.