A Textile Based Polypyrrole Chloride Sensor for Agricultural Use

This paper describes the feasibility of developing a novel polypyrrole (PPy) potentiometric sensor. Conductive PPy-based polymers has been grown through a textile scaffold to create a flexible and robust sensing structure that can survive environments such as soil, with the choice of the scaffold materials offering control of the environmental impact. Further work has demonstrated that doped PPy has an electrochemical response that is sensitive to different measurands’ concentration and in this case, we look at chloride response. Various chloride sensors were evaluated in varying concentrations of the potassium chloride test solutions in terms of their chloride ion sensitivity, hydration times and usable lifetime. The best performing sensor has shown a near-Nernstian response between 45–48 mV/decade to chloride ions and at least 2 weeks initial lifetime.