title: A novel methanol sensor based on gas-penetration through a porous polypyrrole-coated polyacrylonitrile nanofiber mat.
abstract: In this work, we propose a novel chemoresistive gas sensor operated under a vertical analyte flow passing through a permeable sensing membrane. Such a configuration is different from the use of a planar sensor implemented under a conventional horizontal flow. A highly porous core-shell polyacrylonitrile-polypyrrole (PAN@PPy) nanofiber mat was prepared as the sensing element via electrospinning and two-step vapor-phase polymerization (VPP). Various analysis methods such as SEM, TEM, FT-IR and XPS measurements were employed in order to characterize structural features of the porous sensing mat. These analyses confirmed that very thin (ca. 10 nm) conductive PPy sheath layers were deposited by VPP on electrospun PAN nanofibers with an average diameter of 258 nm. Preliminary results revealed that the gas penetration-type PAN@PPy sensor had a higher sensor response and shorter detection and recovery times upon exposure to methanol analyte when compared with a conventional horizontal flow sensor due to efficient and fast analyte transfer into the sensing layer.
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Bio-Nano Engineering, Hanyang University, Ansan 426-791, South Korea.
authors.forename: Tae-Sun
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Jun
authors.forename: Thi Anh
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Ho
authors.forename: Muhammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rashid
authors.forename: Yong Shin
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D000180:Acrylic Resins / Q000737:chemistry*; D000432:Methanol / Q000032:analysis*; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D046529:Microscopy, Electron, Transmission; D057139:Nanofibers; D056951:Photoelectron Spectroscopy; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D011758:Pyrroles / Q000737:chemistry*; D017550:Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared
chemical_list: D000180:Acrylic Resins; D011108:Polymers; D011758:Pyrroles; C010504:polyacrylonitrile; C067635:polypyrrole; D000432:Methanol