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The quality of fuel plays an important role for smooth operation of automotive vehicle engine. Current research work is focused on the development of highly sensitive chemical sensor coatings for monitoring automotive fuel quality which is divided into three parts. In the first part, an interdigital electronic sensor is developed for monitoring ethanol percentage in ethanol-gasoline (gasohol) blended fuels. The sensor layer is a composite mixture of ethanol imprinted titania sol (EITS) and ethanol imprinted polyaniline (EIPani) where EITS is a base matrix and EIPani acts as filler. The EITS-EIPani composite sensor layer is fabricated on interdigital capacitors (IDCs) by spin coating. The IDCs are designed by customized printed circuit board (PCB) pattern having an active surface area of 0.90 cm2. The structural functionality and morphology of sensor layer is characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), respectively. Sensor measurements are carried out for naked IDCs, coated with pristine EITS, and dual imprinted EITS-EIPani composite layers for ethanol sensing in standard ethanol solutions i.e. 1-10 (vol.%). The EITS-EIPani sensor coating demonstrated excellent sensitivity and selectivity for ethanol recognition and furthermore, the developed layer also shows reliable sensor response for ethanol in real-time gasohol fuel blends. This developed IDCs based sensor devices have shown suitable potential for rapid determination of ethanol in real time samples which could be optimized for on-board monitoring of ethanol in automotive vehicles and other quality control applications. The second part of the thesis is focused on the determination of thiophenic compounds in fuels. Thiophenic compounds are potential source of environmental pollution due to SOx emission, deteriorate exhaust catalyst and also results corrosion of vehicle engine. Thiophenic compounds such as benzothiophene (BT) and dibenzothiophene (DBT) comprises more than 60% of sulfur compounds in fuel and are difficult to remove from crude oil in conventional desulfurization process of refineries. In this work, sensing of BT and DBT in gasoline is carried out by IDCs coated with composite layer of metal sulfide nanoparticles and titania sol (TS). Molybdenum sulfide (MoS2) and nickel sulfide (NiS) nanoparticles are dispersed separately in TS for recognition of BT and DBT following affinity interactions. The synthesized sensor coating materials are characterized by spectroscopic techniques including UV/Vis and FTIR furthermore, the morphology of nanoparticles and their resultant coatings are investigated by AFM images. Sensor response of IDCs coated with TS, TS-MoS2, and TS-NiS is measured for varying concentrations of BT and DBT i.e. 10-80 ppm standard solutions made in n-hexane. TS-NiS coated IDCS exhibited significant sensitivity and selectivity pattern furthermore, it also showed comparable sensor shifts when tested for BT and DBT sensing in real-time samples i.e. gasoline. These results suggest that TS-NiS sensor coatings could be suitably used for precise monitoring of thiophenic compounds in commercial gasoline samples. In third part of thesis, magnetic nano-molecularly imprinted polymers (NMIPs) were synthesized for selective recognition of fatty acid methyl esters i.e. biodiesel. Methyl ester template is immobilized to glass beads and two functional monomers (N-allylthiourea and acrylamide) are used for the synthesis of three different magnetic NMIPs. The two types of magnetic NMIPs contain N-allylthiourea and acrylamide, respectively while third one has equimolar proportion of both functional monomers. Average diameter of magnetic NMIPs is in the range of 160-205 nm determined through dynamic light scattering instrument (DLS). Fluorescent labeled methyl 11-(naphthalene-4-yloxy)undecanoate is taken as target analyte to investigate the rebinding affinity of synthesized magnetic NMIPs through UV/Vis. Among three magnetic NMIPs, acrylamide-co-N-allylthiourea has shown highest rebinding response for fatty acid methyl esters indicating that collaborative interactions of two monomers results enhanced recognition of target analyte thus, the developed NMIPs could be potentially used for optical sensing of methyl esters.
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