Development of polyaniline/zeolite composites as a CO/N2 sensor

Abstract

Polyaniline (PANI) is one of the most popular conductive polymers used for sensor applications due to the ease of synthesis, and environmental and thermal stability. Zeolite with gas adsorptivity is utilized to composite with polyaniline doped Maleic acid, in order to increase the sensor sensitivity. In this study, we used zeolite Y, 13X and AIMCM41 with the pre sizes of 7, 10, 36 A, and the Cu2+ exchange capacity of 0.32, 0.17 and 0.087 mol/g, respectively. The sensor sensitivity found to be increased with the zeolite content. To study the effect of zelite types, the content of 10% wt was selected because of its modurate sensitivity and processibility. We found that the highest sensitivity was provided by the composite of zeolite13x, followed by zeolite Y, and AIMCM 41, respectively. The lower in sensitivity of zeolite Y is due to the excess of Cu2+ ions that is reduced free volume of zeolite to absorb CO molecules. The too large pores size with less amount of Cu2+ in AIMCM41 is not effective to absorb CO molecules.