Abstract: Chemical sensors, based on highly mass sensitive QMB or SAW devices, coated with thin layers of calixarenes, enable the detection of organic solvent vapours, especially halogenated or aromatic hydrocarbons, down to a few ppm. Force field calculations allow the tailoring of these sensor materials seeing that the predicted interaction energies between the host molecules and a large variety of analytes are linearly correlated to the measured sensor effects. These correlations and also BET adsorption analysis prove the analyte recognition properties of these calixarene coatings to be mainly based on host/guest inclusion principles.

Abstract: Environmental analysis is a potential key application for chemical sensors owing to their inherent ability to detect analytes on-line and in real time in distributed systems. Operating a chemosensor in a natural environment poses substantial challenges in terms of ruggedness, long-term stability and calibration. This article highlights current trends of achieving both the necessary selectivity and ruggedness: one way is deploying sensor arrays consisting of robust broadband sensors and extracting information via chemometrics. If using only a single sensor is desired, molecularly imprinted polymers offer a straightforward way for designing artificial recognition materials. Molecularly imprinted polymers can be utilized in real-life environments, such as water and air, aiming at detecting analytes ranging from small molecules to entire cells.