Printable Self-Powered Electrochemical Oxygen Sensor

Oxygen sensors have a wide range of applications, from monitoring respiration and oceanography to food and pharmaceutical industries. These sensors measure the oxygen concentration in a gas or liquid, typically air or exhaust gases, and play a crucial role in improving efficiency, reducing emissions, and ensuring safety and environmental compliance. Screen printing is a widely adopted method for producing energy storage devices, especially in printed electronics. It creates patterns of conductive materials, such as electrodes and current collectors, on various substrates. In this work, an electrochemical sensor was fabricated using printing technology for O₂ detection at room temperature. This design consists of zinc metal as an anode and carbon-based material as a cathode. The oxygen concentration can be observed in terms of electrical signals. A complete product development process has been demonstrated, including material screening, hardware design, and sensor tests. The resultant sensor exhibits a fast response (T₉₀ ~2.7 s) and high sensitivity. Furthermore, the sensor fabrication is an environmentally friendly process with minimized consumption of toxic materials, such as Pd, and release of pollutants.