Facile preparation of polypyrrole-reduced graphene oxide hybrid for enhancing NH3 sensing at room temperature

Polypyrrole (PPy)-reduced graphene oxide (rGO) hybrid was successfully synthesized by a facile in situ polymerization. The as-synthesized PPy nanoparticles with diameter of ca. 80 nm were uniformly distributed on the surface of the rGO sheets to prepare the hybrid of PPy/rGO. Then the pure PPy and their hybrids were loaded on the substrate of flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film to construct a thin film NH3 sensor, which has the advantages of being flexible, economical, portable and able to operable at room temperature (RT). The gas-sensing results reveal that the 5 wt% rGO-PPy hybrid based sensor not only exhibits the highest response to 10 ppm NH3, which is 2.5 times higher than that of pure PPy, but also excellent selectivity to some of VOCs. The enhancement of gas-sensing properties may be attributed to the pi-pi stacking and H-bonding formation between PPy and rGO, larger surface accessibility and fast transport of carriers. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.