Conducting Polyaniline Blends with the Soft Template Poly(Vinyl Pyrrolidone) and their Chemosensor Application

Abstract

This article reports the influence of poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) soft-template without/with p-hydroxybenzoic acid (HBA) on the characteristics and chemosensor application of polyaniline (PANI). PANI and PANI-HBA have micrograins while the PANI-PVP blend exhibits nanostructure; the PANI-PVP-HBA blend has microgranules/microspheres. In sensor behavior, PANI shows greater sensitivity towards C₆H₅Cl and CH₂Cl₂ and less sensitivity to CHCl₃. Contrarily, the PANI-PVP blend has improved sensitivity to CHCl₃ but less to CH₂Cl₂. When PVP and HBA are present together, the resulting PANI materials lose their sensitivities. Thus, the soft-template role of PVP is operative only on blending it alone with PANI, but with HBA it gets modified/nullified.

Keywords:

• chemosensors
• polyaniline
• poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) blends
• soft-template

Acknowledgments

One of the authors (N. Vijayakumar) acknowledges the award of a teacher fellowship under UGC XI plan Faculty Development Program. The financial support from DST-SERC, Govt. of India, through a project (No. SR/S2/CMP. 22/2009) is also acknowledged.

Notes

(Static method: Exposure time = 30 min).

Note: Peak positions where shifting occurs considerably on solvent vapor exposure are given in bold form.