In situ synthesis of ternary prussian blue, hierarchical SnO2 and polypyrrole by chemical oxidative polymerization and their sensing properties to volatile organic compounds

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the potential of a new ternary clad modified polypyrrole (PPy), prussian blue (PB) and SnO2, PPy-PB-SnO2 sensor for fiber optic gas sensing applications. The as-prepared SnO2 and PPy-PB-SnO2 composite is characterized structurally, morphologically and thermally by XRD, FESEM, HRTEM and TGA techniques. Further, the ternary PPy-PB-SnO2 composite is used as an effective clad modified fiber optic gas sensing material to examine a series of volatile gases, such as ethanol, ammonia, acetone and methanol at room temperature and its sensing characteristics is compared with pure SnO2 sensor. From the detailed experiments, it is observed that the ternary composite exhibits excellent spectral response to all the volatile gases and is highly selective to ammonia gas which outstripped the gas sensing properties of SnO2. Thus, the as-prepared ternary PPy-PB-SnO2 composite sensor implies its potential application in fiber optic gas sensors.