Highly Enhanced Vapor Sensing of Multiwalled Carbon Nanotube Network Sensors by n-Butylamine Functionalization

Abstract

The sensing of volatile organic compounds by multiwall carbon nanotube networks of randomly entangled pristine nanotubes or the nanotubes functionalized by n-butylamine, which were deposited on polyurethane supporting electrospinned nonwoven membrane, has been investigated. The results show that the sensing of volatile organic compounds by functionalized nanotubes considerably increases with respect to pristine nanotubes. The increase is highly dependent on used vapor polarity. For the case of highly polar methanol, the functionalized MWCNT network exhibits even more than eightfold higher sensitivity in comparison to the network prepared from pristine nanotubes.