DOI: https://doi.org/10.55373/mjchem.v26i3.29

Keywords: Acetone; adsorption-desorption; conducting polymer; polyaniline

Abstract

Acetone, a group of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), harms the environment and human health. This work focuses on developing acetone detection materials for safety precautions. However, the main challenge of this type of gas sensor is the operation at high temperatures (greater than 200°C), which is barely practical for high-risk conditions. Therefore, this study proposes an attractive approach for designing sensing materials to operate at a lowered operating temperature by integrating an organic material as the additional sensing material. A conducting polymer known as polyaniline (PANI) was added to the titanium oxide (TiO2) by in-situ chemical polymerization method to form the PANI-TiO2 nanocomposite. The effect of doped PANI was studied in a range of percentage compositions. It was characterized using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FESEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Fourier Transformation Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), and N2 adsorption-desorption analysis. Meanwhile, the performances of composite pellets were measured at lower temperatures (below 70°C) for acetone concentrations of 100 – 500 ppm and optimized. It was found that 30 wt.% of PANI-TiO2 was the best percentage loading, giving the maximum sensitivity. The optimum performance was obtained at 45°C of operating temperature with sensitivity approximately at 16.19% for 300 ppm of acetone exposure.