Sensor Sensitivity Versus Sampling Time

TABLE 1.8 Minimum Possible Concentration, Represented by One Molecule of Explosive 

Operational application and economics often determine trade-off choices between sensitivity and sampling time. Since sensing units have historically tended to increase in cost and fragility with sensitivity, increasing sampling time may offer a desirable option for some system designs. 

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Due to a small water vapor sensitivity of the IrTMOS structure, the signal from the sensor was allowed to stabilze for 3.5 minutes after the absorption of the sample before the activator strip was pressed down. Again the relative enzyme activity (in the reagent strip) was determined from slopes of versus time plots. Some results are shown in Fig.7. The sensitivity of this solid carrier system is about 0.005 /iM Hg ". One sample was analyzed in less than 8 minutes. 

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