Development and Use of NO Chemical Sensor
David Randall (Chemistry)
Development and use of NO chemical sensor
In the last 25 years, the importance of Nitric Oxide (NO) in biological chemical processes has been recognized. Accordingly, chemists are trying to understand some of mechanisms by which reacts in biological systems. Foundational to gaining deeper understanding of the chemistry is knowing (by measuring) the quantity of material present at various stages of the reaction. For liquids and solids scientists have excellent methods to measure accurately and precisely small amounts material (balances, burets, syringes, and so forth). For gasses it is more difficult. Gasses are soluble (to a small amount) in liquids and known-amounts of NO gas are delivered by delivering a precisely measured volume of NO-saturated solution. However the exact amount of NO in the solution is not precisely known, it is only known to be “saturated”. We propose to develop a chemical sensor, based on cobalt tetraphenyl porphyrin (CoTPP) to determine more precisely the amount of NO that is present in solvents that are commonly employed in synthetic organic and inorganic chemistry.