Parashmani Das , Somik Banerjee and Bijoy Sankar Goswami
Abstract
Detection of environmentally hazardous ions such as chloride, sulphate and phosphates in water bodies are of immense importance when it comes to the sustainability of water bodies and aquatic flora and fauna in specific and controlling water pollution in general. Conducting polymer-based nano fibers have demonstrated immense applicability in sensing, and, as such, the present work focuses on the development of Polyaniline (PAni) nano fiber-based chemiresistors using inter-digitated electrodes for the sensing of these harmful analytes. The present study demonstrates that inter-digitated chemiresistors modified with PAni nanofiber-based nanocomposites exhibit sensitivity of approx. 0.33 K?/ppm for sulphate ion. The sensors, although nonlinear, can be calibrated using 2nd and 3rd-order polynomials and, as such, can be used to determine unknown concentrations of the analytes in aqueous media by analysing the resistance measured by the chemiresistors.