Temperature and Concentration Sensing of (PPy-DBS) Films for Dual Sensing-actuators

Abstract:
Inspired by Nature and biological organs, scientists have been looking for actuators, that mimicking the living muscles, will sense the working conditions while actuating, that is, a sensing-actuator in a physically uniform device. For this purpose, conducting polymers are promising materials. Their way of working mimics the intracellular matrix of biological cells, they exchange solvent (water) and ions with the surrounding environment, besides similarly to cells they are soft and contain macromolecules (polymer chains). It has been published already how polypyrrole/dodecylbenzene sulfonate (PPy/DBS) films exhibit this dual sensing-actuating behaviour, being the energy the sensing magnitude. In this work (PPy-DBS) films were subjected to potential sweep rates, potential steps and current steps at different values of temperature and concentration in aqueous solutions on LiClO4 with the aim of studying the sensing properties of conducting polymers when two properties of the surrounding changes.