Sufficient Gas and Solvated Ion Transport Assisted Rapid NH₃ Detection at Room Temperature Through Bionic Olfactory Fibres

The human olfactory sensing system, based on ionic signal transmission, is featured with fastness, high efficiency and low energy consumption. However, bionic gas sensing materials exhibit performance limitations compared to materials based on electronic signal transmission. Herein, bionic olfactory fibres are prepared by electrospinning for rapid gas sensing at the ppb level, which consist of confined ionic liquids (ILs) within nano spacing in a polymer matrix. The fibres showed a high response (69.29%) to 500 ppb NH₃, ultrafast response (4 s) and a low theoretical limit of detection (45 ppb). The excellent sensing performance is attributed to the sufficient gas transport pathways formed by gas convection within the fibrous pore structures. In addition, the rapid transport of solvated ions, caused by the encapsulation of target molecules around ILs in the confined nano spacing, also plays a role, as confirmed by experimental and simulation results. Moreover, bionic olfactory fibres demonstrate excellent gas cyclic stability, mechanical robustness and humidity resistance, which makes them highly suitable for disease diagnosis and seafood spoilage detection in humid environments. Using AI-driven data analysis on gas response from shrimp spoilage, 95% test accuracy was attained, enabling precise seafood freshness monitoring. This work provides a novel platform for intelligent gas perception through hardware-software codesign, showing promising potential to create bioinspired integrated sensing systems combining gas and solvated ion transport mediation with AI for decision-making analysis.