Gas analysis by monitoring molecular diffusion in a microfluidic channel

Despite the increasing industrial and domestic demand for gas analyzers, the unmanageable size and cost of the available devices prevent them from fulfilling this pervasive need. In this paper, we demonstrate that, monitored by a generic gas sensor, the progress rate of a gaseous analyte's free diffusion through an air-filled centimeter-long microfluidic channel yields sufficient information for gas recognition. The installation of additional channels made from different materials provides more uncorrelated information, enabling more detailed gas analyses. This device classifies gases based on their physical features at room temperature, namely, diffusivity and interaction (physisorption/desorption) with channel walls. This process does not degrade the gas discriminating element of the instrument. Our prototype, featuring a 50 mm long 50 μm bore borosilicate glass channel, successfully differentiated between 24 analytes, including four butanol isomers, and estimated the compositions of their binary and ternary gas mixtures dispersed in air at different concentration levels. The findings presented here are directly applicable to the production of a new inexpensive, compact, portable, and durable generation of artificial olfaction system whose performance is almost entirely independent of the utilized gas sensor's drift.