A nanosized Y₂O₃-based catalytic chemiluminescent sensor for trimethylamine

The development of a catalytic chemiluminescent trimethylamine (TMA) sensor is demonstrated in the present paper. Intensive chemiluminescence (CL) is detected when TMA is introduced over the surface of nanosized catalysts and subsequently catalytically oxidized by O₂ from the air, and four catalysts are investigated with the strongest CL intensity obtained on nanosized Y₂O₃. This effect is utilized to develop a novel nanosized Y₂O₃-based catalytic CL sensor for TMA which under optimal conditions exhibits a wide linear range of 60-42,000 ppm and a detection limit of 10 ppm. An attractive advantage of this novel CL sensor is its high selectivity to TMA with negligible responses to many other gases such as NH₃ and organic vapors. This CL sensor has a short response time of less than 3 s, and shows good stability when examined by continual introduction of TMA into the sensor for 96 h. The applicability of this sensor to actual fish samples is also demonstrated in the paper.