Flexible sensor patch for continuous carbon dioxide monitoring

Monitoring and measurement of carbon dioxide (CO₂) is critical for many fields. The gold standard CO₂ sensor, the Severinghaus electrode, has remained unchanged for decades. In recent years, many other CO₂ sensor formats, such as detection based upon pH-sensitive dyes, have been demonstrated, opening the door for relatively simple optical detection schemes. However, a majority of these optochemical sensors require complex sensor preparation steps and are difficult to control and repeatably execute. Here, we report a facile CO₂ sensor generation method that suffers from none of the typical fabrication issues. The method described here utilizes polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as the flexible sensor matrix and 1-hydroxypyrene-3,6,8-trisulfonate (HPTS), a pH-sensitive dye, as the sensing material. HPTS, a base (NaOH), and glycerol are loaded as dense droplets into a thin PDMS layer which is subsequently cured around the droplet. The fabrication process does not require prior knowledge in chemistry or device fabrication and can be completed as quickly as PDMS cures (∼2 h). We demonstrate the application of this thin-patch sensor for in-line CO₂ quantification in cell culture media. To this end, we optimized the sensing composition and quantified CO₂ in the range of 0-20 kPa. A standard curve was generated with high fidelity (R ² = 0.998) along with an analytical resolution of 0.5 kPa (3.7 mm Hg). Additionally, the sensor is fully autoclavable for applications requiring sterility and has a long working lifetime. This flexible, simple-to-manufacture sensor has a myriad of potential applications and represents a new, straightforward means for optical carbon dioxide measurement.