Ultrafast Room Temperature Synthesis of Porous Polythiophene via Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Polymerization Technique and Its Application to NO2 Gas Sensors

Choon-Sang Park; Do Yeob Kim; Eun Young Jung; Hyo Jun Jang; Gyu Tae Bae; Jae Young Kim; Bhum Jae Shin; Hyung-Kun Lee; Heung-Sik Tae

doi:10.3390/polym13111783

Ultrafast Room Temperature Synthesis of Porous Polythiophene via Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Polymerization Technique and Its Application to NO₂ Gas Sensors

Polymers (Basel). 2021 May 28;13(11):1783. doi: 10.3390/polym13111783.

Authors

Choon-Sang Park¹, Do Yeob Kim², Eun Young Jung³, Hyo Jun Jang³, Gyu Tae Bae³, Jae Young Kim³, Bhum Jae Shin⁴, Hyung-Kun Lee², Heung-Sik Tae^{3

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, NY 66506, USA.
² ICT Creative Research Laboratory, Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute, Daejeon 34129, Korea.
³ School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea.
⁴ Department of Electronics Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul 05006, Korea.
⁵ School of Electronics Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea.

Abstract

New nanostructured conducting porous polythiophene (PTh) films are directly deposited on substrates at room temperature (RT) by novel atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJs) polymerization technique. The proposed plasma polymerization synthesis technique can grow the PTh films with a very fast deposition rate of about 7.0 μm·min^-1 by improving the sufficient nucleation and fragment of the thiophene monomer. This study also compares pure and iodine (I₂)-doped PTh films to demonstrate the effects of I₂ doping. To check the feasibility as a sensing material, NO₂-sensing properties of the I₂-doped PTh films-based gas sensors are also investigated. As a result, the proposed APPJs device can produce the high density, porous and ultra-fast polymer films, and polymers-based gas sensors have high sensitivity to NO₂ at RT. Our approach enabled a series of processes from synthesis of sensing materials to fabrication of gas sensors to be carried out simultaneously.

Keywords: NO2; atmospheric pressure plasma; conducting polymer; gas sensors; plasma polymerization; porous polythiophene; room temperature growth.

Abstract

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