New Chemoresistive Gas Sensor Arrays for Outdoor Air Quality Monitoring: A Combined R&D and Outreach Activities

Nowadays, air pollution still remains a critical issue. Global agreements have been signed by several countries to limit emissions of air pollutants [1], introducing increasingly stringent legislation. Moreover, national and supranational organizations, such as the UN and the European Union, publish updated reports on the situation on an annual basis. In recent years, research has focused not only on the use of renewable energy sources for sustainable development, but also on increasingly simple and reliable methods for detecting and mapping the concentration of toxic and polluting gases [2]. To achieve this goal, it is essential to develop sensors capable of easily acquiring and providing data in real time. In this work we present the results obtained in the project CHEARIA, a collaborative activity between Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK) of Trento, the local environmental protection agency (APPA) and several high schools of the Trentino-Alto Adige Region, as part of the national training program "work-based learning". The program was mainly focused on the development of chemoresistive gas sensor arrays produced at FBK, and their use to monitor the city air quality. Data were collected by exploiting the Internet of Things (IoT). The obtained results were compared with those obtained with the certified systems of the APPA agency.