Development of Highly Sensitive Iron (III) Oxide Thin Film for Acetone Sensing

Human breath contains various biomarkers which possibly can give us information about various diseases. Acetone is one such biomarker giving the information of blood glucose levels in the body. Breath acetone content for a healthy person is in the range of 0.5 to 2 ppm. Acetone concentration above this concentration may be an indication of person being diabetic. Hence it is imperative to detect this gas at low concentrations. This paper presents the development of iron oxide thin film for the highly sensitive detection of Acetone (CH
₃
COCH
₃
). Developed iron oxide thin film is characterized using FESEM and micro-Raman. It was demonstrated that the film exhibited a response of 65% for the acetone concentration as low as 1 ppm. The limit of detection for the film is ~50ppb.