LPG Sensing Properties of Electrospun In-Situ Polymerized Polyaniline/MWCNT Composite Nanofibers

In this paper, we report the fabrication of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) nanofibers by electrospinning technique and used as substrate for coating pure polyaniline (PANI) and PANI/multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) separately during chemical oxidative polymerization. The morphology and structure of PANI and PANI/MWCNT nanofibers were investigated by SEM, UV-VIS, FTIR and XRD. SEM shows that the fibrous structure of PMMA with an average fiber diameter 272 nm. UV-Vis, FTIR and XRD analyses confirmed the formation of PANI and its interaction with MWCNT. Electrical responses of the synthesized samples towards LPG were measured at room temperature for various ppm, which fulfill all the characteristics like sensitivity, response, recovery of the sensors. Sensitivity study shows that materials under investigation are found to be highly sensitive for LPG near to room temperature. PANI/MWCNT nanofibers showed rapid and reversible resistance change upon exposure to LPG as compared to that of PANI nanofibers, which may be due to MWCNT wrapped by conducting PANI results in the formation of a charge transfer complex which increases the protonation of the polyaniline and the transition in the electrical resistance was attributed to a change in the localization length of the composite nanofibers.