“Exhaled-breath sensor platform shows potential for disease diagnosis”
Disease diagnosis based on exhaled breath expected to serve as platform for next-generation medicine
Jeong Seong-Yong’s team’s research featured as inside back cover of Journal of Materials Chemistry A

The team led by Professor Jeong Seong-Yong of the Institute for High Technology Materials and Devices succeeded in developing a new sensor based on palladium that detects hydrogen in a highly selective and sensitive manner using porous tin oxide enhanced with catalysts.

Funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT, Sejong Science Fellowship, and National Research Foundation of Korea, the study was published as an inside back cover paper of the Journal of Materials Chemistry A (IF=14.511), a leading journal in materials science.
  * Title: Hierarchically porous PdO-functionalized SnO2 nanoarchitectures for exclusively selective, sensitive, and fast detection of exhaled hydrogen
  * Journal: Journal of Materials Chemistry A
  * Authors: Kim Sang Hun (co-first-author, doctoral student), Moon Young Kook (co-first-author, doctoral student), late Lee Jong-Heun (co-author, professor of Department of Materials Science and Engineering), Kang Yun Chan (co-author, professor of Department of Materials Science and Engineering), Jeong Seong-Yong (corresponding author, research professor of Institute for High Technology Materials and Devices)

This innovative technique paves the way for future medicine by enabling the low-cost and early diagnosis of diseases using exhaled breath alone, a non-invasive approach that does not require the sampling of blood or tissue.

Exhaled human breath contains various biomarker gases, such as hydrogen, acetone, hydrogen sulfide and toluene, and diseases can be diagnosed in their early stages without going to hospital by using the concentration levels of specific gases.

Since hydrogen only exists in trace amounts below 20 ppm (parts per million), sensor sensitivity must be enhanced for the accurate analysis of exhaled breath.

In addition, improving the accuracy of exhaled breath analyzers has been challenging due to exhaled breath containing both a significant portion of water and hundreds of gases.

The researchers designed a tin oxide structure enhanced with porous palladium prepared by spray pyrolysis, and demonstrated that the highly sensitive and selective detection of hydrogen can be used for the early diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome. The sensor could detect trace amounts of hydrogen in exhaled breath within 4 seconds, and remained stable under high humidity conditions. A primary advantage of the sensor is its ability to accurately detect biomarker gases in exhaled gas regardless of changes to the surrounding environment.

In particular, the response of the structural gas sensor to hydrogen at 20 ppm was considerable at 6.9, and the gas selectivity to hydrogen was at least 5.2 times higher than that of other gases.

Professor Jeong said, “The significance of this study lies in using the oxide semiconductor-based gas sensor to detect biomarker gases in a highly sensitive and selective manner, and the opening of new possibilities for disease diagnosis. Our results will pave the way for exhaled breath sensors to be developed for the purpose of self-diagnosis.”


[ Figures ]


Fig 1. (Top) Fabrication of porous tin oxide structure enhanced with palladium using spray pyrolysis (Bottom) Structural and compositional analysis of porous tin oxide structure enhanced with palladium



Fig 2. (From left) Gas sensitivity and selectivity of tin oxide structure enhanced with palladium, and dynamic gas-sensing properties



Fig 3. Principle of gas-sensing



Fig 4. Inside Back Cover of Journal of Materials Chemistry A