Page 74 - Organic Electronics in Sensors and Biotechnology
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CHAPTER 2






                                        Organic Thin-Film


                                             Transistors for



                                  Inorganic Substance


                                                    Monitoring






                                                 *
                                          *
                               *,†
                     *,†
               L. Torsi,  N. Cioffi,  F. Marinelli,  E. Ieva,
                         *
                                                 ‡
                                     ‡
               L. Colaianni,  A. Dell’Aquila,  G. P. Suranna,
                                                  ¶
                         ‡
                                       §
               P. Mastrorilli,  S. G. Mhaisalkar,  K. Buchholt,
                           ¶
               A. Lloyd Spetz,  and L. Sabbatini *,†
          2.1  Inorganic Substance Monitoring for Early Diagnosis
               The relevance in monitoring toxic volatile analytes arises from the
               increasing human activities that, especially in the last decades,
               caused the emission into the atmosphere of a wide range of pollut-
               ants at high concentration levels. Among the inorganic gaseous pol-
               lutants, nitrogen oxides (NO, NO ), carbon monoxide (CO), and
                                             2
               hydrogen sulfide (H S) are enumerated as the most toxic gases with
                                 2
               very harmful effects on human health. In addition to their toxic
               effect on the human body, such gases are produced by specific cells
               at low concentrations, and their antiviral and immunodefensive


               *Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Bari, Bari (Italy).
               † Centro di Eccellenza TIRES, Università degli Studi di Bari, Bari (Italy).
               ‡ Department of Water Engineering and of Chemistry, Polytechnic of Bari, Bari (Italy).
               § School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University,
               Singapore.
               ¶ Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Linköping University, Linköping,
               Sweden.
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