ZnO Decorated Graphene-Based NFC Tag for Personal NO₂ Exposure Monitoring during a Workday

This paper presents the integration of a sensing layer over interdigitated electrodes and an electronic circuit on the same flexible printed circuit board. This integration provides an effective technique to use this design as a wearable gas measuring system in a target application, exhibiting high performance, low power consumption, and being lightweight for on-site monitoring. The wearable system proves the concept of using an NFC tag combined with a chemoresistive gas sensor as a cumulative gas sensor, having the possibility of holding the data for a working day, and completely capturing the exposure of a person to NO₂ concentrations. Three different types of sensors were tested, depositing the sensing layers on gold electrodes over Kapton substrate: bare graphene, graphene decorated with 5 wt.% zinc oxide nanoflowers, or nanopillars. The deposited layers were characterized using FESEM, EDX, XRD, and Raman spectroscopy to determine their crystalline structure, morphological and chemical compositions. The gas sensing performance of the sensors was analyzed against NO₂ (dry and humid conditions) and other interfering species (dry conditions) to check their sensitivity and selectivity. The resultant-built wearable NFC tag system accumulates the data in a non-volatile memory every minute and has an average low power consumption of 24.9 µW in dynamic operation. Also, it can be easily attached to a work vest.