Polyacrylamide coated on quartz crystal microbalance electrodes for highly sensitive sensor of acetic acid

In many cases, acetic acid is categorized as hazardous to health. A high-performance sensor for detecting acetic acid is urgently required. This study aims to observe the characteristics of quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) coated with polyacrylamide as an acetic acid sensor. For this purpose, we prepared the sensor by firstly coating with 1-dodecanethiol (using self-assembled-monolayers or SAM technique) followed subsequently by glutaraldehyde and polyacrylamide (PAM).As results, the sensors showed less sensitivity to humidity changes, which is one of the basic prerequisites for a stable sensor to an environment. We also obtained that the sensor showed relatively fast response time and high sensitivity to acetic acid vapor of about 96 seconds and 12.9 Hz/(mgL -1 ), respectively. Further research, however, is still required to improve the sensitivity and specificity by choosing more selective polymers.