Volatile organic compounds (VOC) are ubiquitous in industrial applications creating a pressing desire for novel transduction pathways to build a broad family of new gas sensors. Nanoporous gold (NPG) is a material with a vast range of untapped potential applications; offering a high surface area found generally in nanomaterials, while also being comparatively simple to fabricate. NPG based sensors can also leverage the unique physics of gold at the nanoscale. In this work, we leverage the multiple unique nanoscale phenomena associated with NPG to demonstrate two novel transduction mechanisms to sense humidity, a model compound. Through direct electrical measurements of NPG, we were able to sense changes in the electronic properties of NPG induced by ambient humidity. We propose two novel transduction mechanisms: chemoresistive changes induced by surface adsorption and electrochemical capacitive changes induced by the electric double layer to detect humidity. To our knowledge this is the first reported application of both these mechanisms for sensing any volatile compounds utilizing NPG.

中文翻译：

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纳米多孔金在湿度传感中的新应用：通用挥发性化合物传感器的框架

挥发性有机化合物 (VOC) 在工业应用中无处不在，因此迫切需要新的转导途径来构建广泛的新型气体传感器系列。纳米多孔金 (NPG) 是一种具有广泛未开发潜在应用的材料；提供了通常在纳米材料中发现的高表面积，同时制造起来也相对简单。基于 NPG 的传感器还可以利用纳米级金的独特物理特性。在这项工作中，我们利用与 NPG 相关的多种独特的纳米级现象来展示两种新的转导机制来感知湿度，一种模型化合物。通过 NPG 的直接电气测量，我们能够感知环境湿度引起的 NPG 电子特性的变化。我们提出了两种新的转导机制：表面吸附引起的化学电阻变化和双电层引起的电化学电容变化以检测湿度。据我们所知，这是这两种机制在利用 NPG 检测任何挥发性化合物方面的首次报道应用。