Design of advanced sensing materials

Issued as final reportNational Science Foundation (U.S.

Modification of structure and selectivity of sensing layers

Issued as final repor

Conducting polymers in electronic chemical sensors

Chemical sensors for gases are at the forefront of the information acquisition chain about the environment in which we live. The quality of the air we breathe is one of the most important concerns of a modern society. A large number of gas sensors use conducting polymers (CPs) because they offer great design flexibility 1,2. They can form selective layers in which the interaction between the analyte gas and the conducting matrix generates the primary change of a physical parameter in the transduction mechanism. On the other hand, their performance in devices that form circuit elements such as transistors has been less than ideal 3,4.The abundant literature dealing with various applications of CPs can be divided into two groups: CPs in electronic 5, optoelectronic 6 and electromechanica

Studies of interactions between conducting polymer and organic vapors, applications to chemical sensing

In order to understand the physicochemical mechanism involved in the organic semiconductor charge-transfer processes occurring upon doping of the films with vapor molecules different experimental approaches much be taken. The effect of vapor diffusion into the electrochemically deposited poly(pyrrole), PP and poly(N-vinylcarbazole), PNVCz, films was investigated by monitoring the mass change of the exposed polymer, absorbance changes in the absorption spectra, and the work function change due to the modulation of the Fermi level in the material. An important step in that investigation was to establish the link between the distribution of the active dopant within the surface and the bulk of the material (1)