Four calixarene supramolecular compounds were employed as adsorptive coating materials of quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) for detection of methanol gas in environmental atmosphere, indicating that resorcinol cyclic tetramer (RCT) was the most effectively active material to methanol. The single crystal of RCT-MeOH was prepared and subject to X-ray diffraction analysis, showing that the recognition mechanism was based on the formation of C—H…π bond interaction between the methyl group of the methanol molecule and the phenyl ring of the calixarene. When the coating mass of RCT was 28.16 μg, the coated QCM sensor possessed the highest sensitivity, that was 0.01245 Hz/ppm. The initial speeds of the adsorption and desorption processes for methanol gas on RCT were obtained as －0.2110 Hz/s and 0.09497 Hz/s, respectively. With rapid test time, good reproducibility and stability, the RCT coated QCM sensor could be used for the detection of methanol samples with a recovery of 97.83%～103.66%, which agreed well with those obtained by gas chromatography, showing its potential application on the determination of methanol gas in atmospheric environment.

Key words: calixarene, methanol, quartz crystal microbalance, single crystal s structure, C—H…π interaction