Electrical transduction in phthalocyanine-based gas sensors: from classical chemiresistors to new functional structures

Phthalocyanines are organic-based materials which have attracted a lot of research in recent times. In the field of sensors, they present interesting and valuable potentialities as sensing elements for real gas sensor applications. In the present article, and taking some of our experiments as representative examples, we review the different ways of transduction applied to such applications. Some of the new tendencies and transducers for as, sensing based on phthalocyanine derivatives are also reported. Among them, electrical transduction (resistors, field-effect transistors, diodes. etc.) has been, historically, the most commonly exploited way for the detection and/or quantification of gas pollutants, vapors and aromas, according to the conducting behavior of phthalocyanines. We will focus precisely on these systems.