Physical properties and application of conducting polypyrrole-silica glass composite films prepared by electrochemical polymerization

The electrochemical behavior of the exchange process for dopant anions in polypyrrole, PPy,-silica glass composite film in acetonitrile solution was analyzed by cyclic voltammetry. These films can be simply prepared by carrying out the electrochemical polymerization of PPy simultaneously with the synthesis of silica glass by using the sol-gel processing. It was found that dopant anions in the PPy-silica glass composite film could be exchanged relatively easily with electrolyte anions in acetonitrile solutions by potential sweeping. Application of these new type of PPy-silica glass composite films to the ionic sensor which responds to specific ions has also been proposed.