AN ELECTROCHEMICAL MICROSENSOR FOR CHLORIDE

The potential-response of a microdisk electrode made with a chloride-doped polypyrrole (PPY) film on a carbon fibre (CF) has been examined. The effect of the polymerization conditions on the response characteristics is discussed. The optimum conditions for preparing the electrode are: cycling potential from +0.8 to +1.0 V in 0.1-0.2M pyrrole (Py) containing 0.1M LiCl, electropolymerization time 15-20 min. The electrode gives a Nernstian response of 56-58 mV/pCl and a detection limit of 3.6 x 10(-5)M chloride. It has the advantages of low resistance, short conditioning time and fast response. It has been used satisfactorily for detection of chloride in serum.

Preparation of highly conductive, self-assembled gold/polyaniline nanocables and polyaniline nanotubes

One-dimensional gold/polyaniline (Au/PANI-CSA) coaxial nanocables with an average diameter of 5060 nm and lengths of more than 1 mu m were successfully synthesized by reacting aniline monomer with chlorauric acid (HAuCl4) through a self-assembly process in the presence Of D-camphor-10-sulfonic acid (CSA), which acts as both a dopant and surfactant. It was found that the formation probability and the size of the Au/PANI-CSA nanocables depends on the molar ratio of aniline to HAuCl4 and the concentration of CSA, respectively. A synergistic growth mechanism was proposed to interpret the formation of the Au/PANI-CSA nanocables. The directly measured conductivity of a single gold/polyaniline nanocable was found to be high (approximate to 77.2S cm(-1)). Hollow PANI-CSA nanotubes, with an average diameter of 50-60 nm, were also obtained successfully by dissolving the Au nanowire core of the Au/PANI-CSA nanocables.