Development and Characterization of Fuel Cell Sensor for Potential Transdermal Ethanol Sensing

Existing fuel cell alcohol sensors suffer from humidity interference and signal instability which renders them useless for transdermal ethanol detection in a non-ideal environment. To address these insufficiencies in fuel cell sensors, various electrode designs, along with the catalysts that would best improve response, were explored in this work. The designs include both two and three electrode setups with Nafion as the proton exchanging membrane. The three-electrode setup provided a more stable signal compared to the two-electrode setup. Considering the development of a potential transdermal ethanol sensor, the ethanol exposed area of the working electrode was optimized to be 1cm2. Catalysts such as Cu, stainless steel, and Ni were studied in these experiments and it was determined that Ni demonstrated the best catalytic activity for ethanol oxidation and oxygen reduction; providing 300 times greater current response than Fe and 3 times greater than Cu. The lower detection limit of the sensor is 1 part per million (ppm) and the sensitivity of the fuel cell sensor using the Ni catalyst was found to be 0.02 nAppm-1 in this study.