Hanyang University's Department of Chemical Engineering Professor Kim Do-hwan's research team and Soongsil University's Professor Lee Ho-jin's research team jointly developed a gas distinguishing sensor technology using wi-fi.

The joint research paper "Wireless power volatile organic compound gas detection sensor based on energy gathering metamaterials" was published in the March edition of "Advanced Electronic Materials", an electronic engineering field international journal.

Metamaterials that can be used in new fields, such as an invisibility cloak that makes an "invisible person" when wrapped around the body, a high-resolution hologram, a high-performance lens, an effective small antenna, and an ultra-sensitive detector are actively under research.

In particular, research regarding the chemical gas sensor using metamaterials is being highlighted for its sensibility, fast response speed, and live sensing characteristic. However, technologies have been limited as heavy, complicated machines that also had required space restrictions.

To overcome these limitations, the joint research team developed a sensor technology that distinguishes types of gas by gathering RF electricity through a wireless wi-fi signal and showing the gathered energy rate gap when the sensor contacts volatile organic compound gas.

Also, to check movement and changes in the amplitude of resonant frequencies when gas is exposed, they used the 2.4 GHz wi-fi signal as the power source to overcome previous problems of having to manually measure the penetration spectrum and gathered the sensors wirelessly.

Furthermore, they created a system that can distinguish types of gas by using the differences of output voltage that are shown according to the exposed volatile organic chemical gas. Here, they used ionic polyelectrolyte to stably sense volatile organic chemicals within a wide density range.

As this wireless gas sensor can be used with mobile hot-spots on phones, it experimentally showed that it can be used as a "breathalyzer." By observing the brightness change of the LED linked to the senor after blowing, one can easily check whether they are drunk or not whenever and wherever.