Environment and Conservation Fund - Flexible and ultralow-power consumption air quality sensor based on wafer-scale 2D material

Professor Chow, Chi Yung Philip   (Principal Investigator (PI))

Professor Li Lain-Jong   (Co-Investigator)

24

2023-09-01

500000

Environment and Conservation Fund - Flexible and ultralow-power consumption air quality sensor based on wafer-scale 2D material

air quality sensor; wafer-scale 2D material; Flexible and ultralow-power consumption

Environmental Sciences

ECF Project 111/2022

Environment and Conservation Fund 2022

2022

On-going

According to the ""Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA)"" and Greenpeace, air pollution is causing 4.5 million premature deaths worldwide each year. This matter is particularly relevant to densely populated cities like Hong Kong, where air pollution is trapped inside our buildings. Various sources affect indoor air quality, including construction materials, stored chemicals, condensation, dust and paints. This cocktail of polluted air affects our well-being, our daily activities, and our physical and mental health. The recent COVID-19 outbreak has further highlighted the vital importance of real-time air pollutant monitoring.The key objective of this project is to develop a new class of air pollutant electronic sensors based on 2D materials. The advantages of 2D materials over metal oxides (found in today’s technology) have been well-demonstrated by recent research efforts. However, the development of this new technology is still at its infancy, with lab-scale prototypes made by mechanically exfoliated 2D samples, which cannot be scaled up and therefore not suitable for industrial scale manufacturing. To address this issue, it is crucial to synthesize large-area (wafer scale), high-quality 2D materials with high uniformity. Our research team at HKU (led by Prof. Lain-Jong Li) is one of the world leading group in developing high-quality wafer-scale 2D materials. Taking advantage of this research capability, in this project we will apply our 2D materials to develop large-area, high-performance air pollutant sensors which can be scaled up in the future for industrial scale manufacturing. Furthermore, our technology can be seamlessly integrated with our buildings, our bodies as well as our environment, paving the way towards real-time sensing of air pollution on a city-wide scale (Smart city; Internet-of-Things).