Perylene diimides derivative/polyaniline nanostructures for high performance chemiresistive ammonia sensor

Polyaniline (PANI) has been recognized as a competitive candidate for room temperature ammonia (NH3) response due to its high conductivity and reversible doping-dedoping property. However, pristine PANI exhibit a limited sensing performance, which hinders its practical application in NH3 detection. Perylene diimides derivatives displays an electron affinity to NH3, while the ultrahigh resistance restrained their sensing utility within organic filed-effect transistors (OFETs). In this work, glycine substituted PDI (PDI-G) was composited with PANI, forming a novel NH3 resistive material merging the merits of PANI and PDI. The (PDI-G)/PANI composites show high sensing response (16.5–200 ppm NH3), low detection limit (0.07 ppm), excellent repeatability, reversibility and good tolerance to humidity variations. The (PDI-G)/PANI composite exhibits 4.7 times higher response to 300 ppm NH3 than pristine PANI, which can be attributed to the formation of hybridized nanostructures, p-n heterojunctions and synergistic effects of the PDI and PDI-G. •Polyaniline/perylene diimide derivative nanocomposites as chemiresistive ammonia sensing materials were proposed.•The full-organic PANI/(PDI-G) nanocomposites were self-assembled by hydrogen bonding and π-π interaction.•The sensing mechanism relies on hybridized nanostructure, p-n heterostructure and synergistic effect of PANI and PDI-G.