Cataluminescence sensor based on LaCO3OH microspheres for volatile organic compounds detection and pattern recognition

The cataluminescence (CTL) reaction detects the presence and concentration of toxic volatile organic compounds by detecting the luminescence intensity of the different components of the gas mixture. In our study, a cataluminescence online sensor system based on LaCO3OH microspheres was developed for the low concentration detection of volatile organic compounds. Multi-dimensional CTL test was carried out to analyse the correlation characteristics of heterogeneous analytes among the catalytic activity, selectivity, sensitivity, response/recover time, stability, and photoelectric signals by changing the parameters of wavelength, flow rate, temperature, and response time under the optimal conditions (280 mL/min, 180oC, and 480 nm). Due to noise interference received by the CTL signal, the weak CTL signal was filtered based on the time-frequency characteristics of the CTL pattern signal power frequency interference and background noise. Next, this study also studied the mechanism action of the cataluminescence sensor based on LaCO3OH microspheres for gas detection, including ethyl ether, acetone, chloroform, and formaldehyde. The principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm was adopted to analyse the CTL patterns, after threshold filtering, the total variance was improved from 89.23% to 98.78% and each vapour gave its unique CTL patterns. Moreover, clustering and identification are discussed to analyse the results, including Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA) and Radial Basis Function Neural Networks (RBFNN), was also discussed. The excellent cluster and recognition ability indicate the feasibility of this CTL sensor for volatile compound determination.