Method for alcohol determination in biological liquids by sensing with a solid-state detector.

Area of Science:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Sensor Technology

Background:

• Accurate alcohol determination is crucial for clinical and forensic applications.
• Existing methods for blood alcohol concentration (BAC) analysis can be complex or time-consuming.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a new, rapid method for quantitative alcohol determination.
• To evaluate the performance of a solid-state metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) detector for this purpose.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a Taguchi MOS sensor exposed to equilibrated headspace vapor of NaCl-saturated biological specimens.
• Measured the resulting direct current (dc) voltage change for alcohol concentration quantification.

Main Results:

• Achieved linear calibration up to 3.00 g/liter with 98-102% analytical recovery.
• Demonstrated high correlation (r=0.997) with automated gas chromatography for blood specimens.
• Method showed sensitivity to 0.01 g/liter and required no internal standard.

Conclusions:

• The MOS detector provides a sensitive, accurate, and potentially automatable method for alcohol determination.
• This technique offers a viable alternative for quantitative alcohol analysis in biological samples.