Preparation of chemosensor materials based on silica nanoparticles with covalently anchored fluorophores by inkjet printing

Samples of sensor layers containing a mixture of spherical silica gel microparticles and spherical macromolecular silica sol nanoparticles have been prepared by inkjet printing. The average diameter of microparticles is 5 μm; nanoparticles about 100 nm in diameter contain covalently anchored fluorophore, dibenzoylmethane boron difluoride (DBMBF 2 ), on the surface. The microstructure of the layers is shown to considerably affect the availability of the fluorophore indicator for gas-phase analyte molecules of the methylbenzene group. The sensitivity of the sensor layers is shown to reach 0.5 ppm with a response time of about 100 s.