Fabrication of controlled nanostructures of conducting polymers and their composites to improve hydrogen gas sensing

The primary goal of this research work is to address fundamental scientific problems in the field of hydrogen gas detection by synthesizing new materials and studying the correlations between their structure/morphology and sensing properties. Our specific research objectives can be elaborated as below. The first objective is to synthesize ordered conducting polymer chains using an inorganic crystal template. The second objective is to fabricate three different morphologies of conducting polymers. One of the morphologies is to produce hollow conducting polymer nanotubes, inspired by carbon nanotubes, to enhance charge carrier mobility using the electrospinning technique. The third objective is to understand the fundamental connection among ordered polymer chains, various morphologies and hydrogen gas sensing properties. The final objective is to enhance their potentials in the different environmental conditions by optimizing the sensitivity and structure/morphology of these materials.