Polyaniline/Tungsten Disulfide Composite for Room-Temperature NH₃ Detection with Rapid Response and Low-PPM...

Polyaniline (PANI) is an important conductive-polymer gas-sensing material with working temperature and mechanical flexibilities superior to those of conventional metal oxide sensing materials. However, its applicability is limited by its low sensitivity, high detection limits, and long response/recovery times. In this study, we prepared PANI/WS₂ composites via chemical oxidative polymerization and mechanical blending. A multilayer sensor structure-sequentially printed silver-paste heating electrodes, fluorene polyester insulating layer, silver interdigitated electrodes, and sensing material layer-was fabricated on a polyimide substrate via flexible microelectronic printing and systematically characterized using scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. The optimized 5 wt% WS₂ composite showed enhanced gas-sensing performance, with 219.1% sensitivity to 100 ppm ammonia (2.4-fold higher than that of pure PANI) and reduced response and recovery times of 24 and 91 s, respectively (compared to 81 and 436 s for pure PANI, respectively). Notably, the PANI/WS₂ sensor detected an ultralow ammonia concentration (100 ppb) with 0.104% sensitivity. The structural characterization and performance analysis results were used to deduce a mechanism for the enhanced sensing capability. These findings highlight the application potential of PANI/WS₂ composites in flexible gas sensors and provide fundamental insights for PANI-based sensing materials research.