Structural analyses of polyaniline–titanium oxide composite for acetone detection

Abstract

This study characterized the performance of polyaniline–titanium oxide (PANI–TiO2) composite to assess its use as potential acetone detector in semiconductor gas sensor. Aniline (ANI), which refers to a monomer, has been used for in situ chemical polymerization to produce polyaniline (PANI) and titanium oxide (TiO2) composite. PANI was varied in composition of 20, 30, and 40 wt% loading with TiO2. Inclusion of PANI in composite is meant to detect acetone at various concentrations (100–500 ppm) at selected operating temperatures (27, 35, 45, 55, and 65 °C). The results signified that the best structure of PANI loading in TiO2 is at 30 wt% due to the molecular structure for gas sensor. The sensitivity of PANI–TiO2 composite pellet for various acetone vapor concentrations had been optimum at 300 ppm with 7.9% sensitivity. The optimum operating temperature was 45 °C with 10.12% sensitivity. Structural characterizations via X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and Brunauer–Emmet–Teller were conducted to correlate with the sensor sensing performance. Indeed, the 30 wt% of PANI–TiO2 composite has the potential to detect 300 ppm of acetone and displayed exceptional agreement with outcomes retrieved at 45 °C detection temperature. © 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.