Fabrication of polyaniline coated conductive cotton for ammonia gas detection

¹ Materials Science and Engineering Programme and Center of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand
² Department of Physics, Faculty of science, Mahidol University and NANOTEC Center of Excellence at Mahidol University, National Nanotechnology Center, Bangkok, Thailand

^* Corresponding author : teerakiat@yahoo.com

Abstract

Nowadays, ammonia becomes major toxic pollutant. The industrial zones, agricultural zones and mining zones are facing this problem all over the world. Ammonia gives irritating strong smell in the environment and it can affect on the health of human with a long exposure time. Moreover, ammonia is also the biomarker which can indicate the health status of human. For these situations, many ammonia gas sensors are produced. In this work, flexible ammonia gas sensor is prepared based on polyaniline through in-situ polymerization process. We developed a wearable smart textile sensor for ammonia gas detection. 100% cotton which does not irritate the wearer was used for this sensor. The polyaniline-cotton composite was characterized by optical microscope, SEM and FTIR spectroscopy. The morphology of the composites reveal PANI was successfully coated on the cotton. The sensitivity of the gas sensors was monitored directly increasing the concentration of ammonia gas. The resistance changes of the sensors can be seen with increasing the concentration. It could also be proved that the sensor is flexible with bending test. In the future, this flexible PANI-cotton composite sensor can be used for ammonia detection in real applications.