Roya Maboudian (Advisor)

Young children trapped in a car without adult supervision may suffer life-threatening complications such as hyperthermia and heat stroke from extreme temperatures—which may rise to 130 °F in some cases. Our research aims to ascertain child presence within two to three minutes of unsupervised activity by probing increases in the levels of carbon dioxide emitted during human exhalation. Non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) sensors are employed to measure car carbon dioxide concentrations every two seconds. Specific numerical metrics are then derived from the data, and the presence of a child can...

Semiconducting metal oxides (MOX) such as SnO2 are an industry-standard material for chemiresistive sensing. However, many MOX-based gas sensors suffer from poor sensitivity, limited selectivity—particularly in the presence of water vapor—and insufficient stability. To address these shortcomings, catalytically active noble metals, such as Pd, are loaded onto the MOX materials to form noble metal-loaded MOX nanocomposites. In this work, we focus on Pd-loaded SnO2 (Pd/SnO2) due to their promising sensitivity to and selectivity for CO and CH4. Pd/SnO2 nanocomposites with varying Pd/Sn...