Adsorption kinetics of optochemical NH3 gas sensing with semiconductor polyaniline films

Polyaniline (PANI) shows electrical as well as optical property changes when it is in contact with oxidant/reductor gas. In this work, the optical transmittance changes in PANI coatings originated by their exposure to the ammonia gas were detected by a nulling optical transmittance bridge. The adsorption and desorption curves were carefully analysed using Langmuir kinetic theory for the adsorption of ammonia gas on PANI single and PANI–PMMA composite coatings. Because of the inhomogeneous nature of the PANI film surface adsorption isotherms were the best described by Freundlich model. From the numerical fitting equations it is suggested that there may be two energetically different adsorption sites on the PANI surface for NH3 molecules, which corroborates with the no-uniform positive charge distribution on the nitrogen atoms of the PANI backbone chains. The activation energy of adsorption and the heat of adsorption were estimated to be about 0.3–0.5 eV at a NH3 gas concentration of 10–1000 ppm.