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.