Fabrication of textile based conductometric polyaniline gas sensor

In this work, we report the fabrication of gas sensors prepared by in situ polymerization of aniline on non-woven fabrics. It is anticipated that a thin coating of polyaniline film fabricated on porous fabric material would improve the performance of the polyaniline based gas sensor. The hypothesis is based on the recent improved technique that allows the fabrication of nanoparticle based polyaniline film, and the high gas permeability of the fabrics. Sensor fabrication parameters which included acidity of reaction media, precursor and reagent concentrations, and the number of modification cycle have been studied. The resulting gas sensors were found to be highly responsive to a range of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This high sensitivity was also accompanied with fast response time (∼10 s). The order of sensitivity to VOCs was found to be ethanol > chloroform > toluene > acetone > ethyl acetate. Further, the sensor was three orders of magnitude more sensitive to ammonia than all organic vapours tested.