Chemical reactivity of polypyrrole and its relevance to polypyrrole based electrochemical sensors

One of the most frequently used conducting polymers, polypyrrole, can take part in chemical processes with typical components of ambient media: oxygen, acids, bases, redox reactants, water, and organic vapors; it can also incorporate nonreactive ions and surfactants from solutions. The influence of such processes on changes of the polymer structure, composition and on possible degradation is analyzed. The benefits and disadvantages of such processes for analytical characteristic of, polypyrrole based electrochemical sensors are considered. This discussion is focused on potentiometric ion sensors, where polypyrrole is either a receptor membrane or an ion-to-electron transducer placed between a solid state electrode support and a typical ion-selective membrane.