Conducting polymers have a wide variety of applications in gas and volatile chemical sensing. Because the chemistry is readily amenable to attachment of substituent groups on to the polymer backbones, it is possible to create tailored adsorbent materials that are capable of high sensitivity to a large number of chemicals. A brief description of these possibilities is given. Much research is focused on the development of sensor arrays that mimic the functioning of the human nose, and with conducting polymers, the inherently high sensitivity to polar compounds allows correlation of sensor response to human response in certain situations. The evolution of this technology will open up a new frontier of objective odour measurements that is a radical change from the traditional chemical analytical methods.

Inspec keywords: gas sensors; electrochemical sensors; conducting polymers; reviews

Other keywords: conduction models; electronic nose; gas sensing; sensor arrays; high sensitivity; electrically conducting polymers; polymerisation; tailored adsorbent materials; olfactory mimicking; volatile chemicals sensing; synthesis; objective odour measurements

Subjects: Chemical sensors