Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Inorganic Micro/Nanomaterial Additives on Polyaniline Based NH₃ Gas Sensor Performance

Abstract

Nowadays conducting polymer based nanocomposites become promising materials for various field of applications like energy harvesting, electronics, and gas sensing devices. This work focuses on the meta-analysis of the effect of different inorganic micro/nano-material additives on polyaniline (PAni) based nanocomposite for ammonia (NH3) gas sensor application at room temperature. The considered NH3 sensors performance parameters are sensitivity, limit of detection (LOD), response time, and recovery time. These parameters show a significant change when inorganic materials like graphene, metal oxides and ternary hybrid materials are mixed with PAni as compared to pure PAni due to the synergetic effect of the micro/nano hybrid combination. The changes in the sensitivity, LOD, response time, and recovery time are elaborated by considering different inorganic micro/nano-material additives in PAni in the framework of pure PAni as a reference point. It is found from analysis that a micro/nano additive in the PAni matrix serve as catalyst and create more active sites in the system, which improves the sensitivity in the range of 23-130 times and LOD is highly reduced by 10-1 to 10-3 order when compared with the sensitivity and LOD of pure PAni. Hence these additives in PAni-based nanocomposite are very crucial and make nanocomposite cost-effective compared to conventional NH3 gas sensors while working at room temperature.