Preparation and Gas Sensing Property of PEDOT/Silica Aerogel Fibers

Porous materials, as their high specific surface area, are commonly used in NH₃-sensing. And when NH₃-sensing materials are made into the form with interconnected pore structure, low-dimensional structure or hierarchical structure, their gas-sensitivity will be improved remarkably. Here, firstly silica aerogel fibers were prepared by wet spinning. Those fibers do not only preserve high specific surface area (maximum one is 835.8 m²/g) and network organization, but also have unique hierarchical structure (macropores in the surface and mesopores in the middle regions) and regular hollow structure. And then PEDOT was synthesized and loaded on the net skeletons of silica aerogel fibers by gas phase polymerization. The specific surface area and pore structure of PEDOT/silica aerogel fibers can be adjusted by change aging bath. Finally, the results of NH₃ sensitivity experiment showed that all fibers have good gas sensitive, especially A0.5-PEDOT/SAFs (resistance variation is over 40%).