Porous conducting polymer and reduced graphene oxide nanocomposites for room temperature gas detection

Abstract

We report the chemical in situ deposition of a porous conducting polymer poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) on reduced graphene oxide (RGO) film as an efficient chemiresistor sensor platform for room temperature NH₃ gas detection. A good covering of porous PEDOT on RGO was achieved through a simple baking treatment during the in situ polymerization of PEDOT. The good covering of porous PEDOT on the RGO surface was confirmed by SEM, UV-Vis spectra, and FT-IR spectra methods. The gas sensing performance revealed that, in contrast to bare RGO and common PEDOT, the porous PEDOT/RGO based gas sensor exhibited an obvious sensitivity enhancement as well as response/recovery performance. The large surface area and very open structure of the porous PEDOT resulted in an excellent synergistic effect between PEDOT and RGO during the gas sensing process. As a result of the uniform distribution of the PEDOT porous network on the RGO sheets, this nanocomposite based sensor also exhibited higher selectivity to NH₃ in contrast to other reductive analyte gases.