Abstract:
Development of highly efficient gas/vapour sensor is an urgent necessity because of rapidly increasing emission
of various hazardous and highly flammable gases/vapours. The chemical detection and quantification are
extremely important to control and monitor the pollutant or toxins and flammable gases/vapours to ensure the
safety of eco-system. Nano sensors have fascinated massive interest owing to their excellent performance along
with being compact, easy to fabricate and cost effective. Over the years, polypyrrole (PPy) is one of the con-
ducting polymers (CPs), proved to be excellent materials for gas/vapour sensing application at room temperature
operations. But pristine PPy has some drawbacks such as poor selectivity & reversibility and poor long-term
stability. However, these sensing properties can be significantly improved by making nanocomposites of PPy
by adding semiconductor metal oxide and/or carbon nanomaterials which amplify adsorption, catalytic reaction
and charge transport behaviour. Hence, PPy nanocomposites have been employed as the gas/vapour sensing
materials for detection and monitoring of various gases such as ammonia (NH3), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG),
hydrogen disulphide (H2S), carbon oxides (CO & CO2), nitrogen oxides (NO & NO2), hydrogen (H2) and different
volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as acetone, ethanol, methanol, formaldehyde, toluene etc. Current
review is focused on the gas/vapour sensing properties of PPy nanocomposites along with future prospects for
the development of new PPy nanocomposites for the fabrication of highly efficient sensors.
