Ag-CS Enhanced Performance of Pyrrolidone-Based Ionic Liquid Oxygen Sensor

Ionic liquids (ILs) have been widely applied for the excellent physical and chemical properties, among which imidazole-based ILs have been employed to improve the performance of electrochemical sensors because of their simple construction and the preparation procedure. Similarly, other ILs with excellent properties could be used as electrolyte for electrochemical sensors. In this paper, a simple one-pot method was used to synthesize the IL N-Butyl-N-methyl pyrrolidone bromide ([C₄mpn]Br), and the electrolyte was used for the first time as an electrochemical sensor to detect oxygen. [C₄mpn]Br, as electrolyte, showed the feasibility to detect oxygen, but the response current was small and sensitivity was low. In order to improve the performance of [C₄mpn]Br, as electrolyte. The response current and sensitivity of the sensor were increased by adding 1% content of Ag-CS and the response current was increased to 64.75 μA under the condition of pure oxygen, and the sensitivity increased to 0.4. This study shows that [C₄mpn]Br is able to respond to oxygen as electrolyte for electrochemical sensor, and the Ag-CS has a significant effect on the improvement of the sensor's performance.