Detection of the organic solvent vapors by the optical gas sensors based on polyaminoarenes

The important problem to ensure the safety of life is the development of effective methods for monitoring of toxic gases in the atmosphere and industrial premises. To ensure such control, various gas sensors are developed that work on the effects of changes in electrical resistance, optical absorption or radiation in a certain spectral range. Most known gas sensors have high operating temperatures, which creates some difficulties in their operation, so more and more attention is paid to sensors based on conjugated electrically conductive polymers, in particular, polyaminoarenes. In result of absorption of inorganic polar gases such as ammonia, nitrogen oxide, hydrogen chloride and others the significant changes in conductivity, optical absorption and morphology of polyaminoarene films are observed. However influence of organic solvent vapors on the optical spectra of polyaminoarene films for today is poorly studied. In the present work the functional polymer films of polyanisidine (PoA) and polytoluidine (PoTI) are proposed as sensitive elements of optical sensors operating at room temperatures. The sensitive films on the transparent SnO2 surface were prepared by electrodeposition. The influence of vapors of organic solvents (dimethylformamide, tetrahydrofuran, chloroform, nitrobenzene, toluene) on the optical characteristics of PoTi and PoA films was established. The optical absorption spectra investigated PoA film was characterized by two band with maximum near 360–410 nm (π–π* transition) and broad band in the range of 620–950 nm which is a superposition of the second and third bands. Influence of organic vapors causes the changes in films coloration. The maximum of sensitivity to the organic vapors for PoTI films in all cases is observed at λ > 550 nm and extends to near-infra-red area indicating a formation of free charge carriers of polaron type. Nonpolar solvent vapors insignificantly affect the optical properties of polyaminoarene films responсes to spectral changes in the visible and NIR range of spectrum. A highest gas sensitivity of optical signal was observed under influence of dimethylformamide and tetrahydrofuran vapors. The time to establish the steady-state value of the optical response is 30–60 s for PoTi, while for PoA reaches 120–180 s depending on the nature of organic vapors.

Neutralization of solvent vapors of brand 646 by the adsorption-catalytic method

The aim of the paper is investigation of neutralization of solvent vapors of the brand 646 by an adsorption-catalytic method. The adsorption-catalytic method includes the following stages: adsorption of the solvent components by adsorbent, thermal desorption and periodic flameless catalytic oxidation of organic substances to carbon dioxide and water. Synthetic zeolite of the NaX brand was used as a sorbent, catalyst was porous Al2O3/SiO2 ceramic foam material with an active catalytic phase. Solvent contains aceton, toluene, butylacetate, ethanol, ethyl cellosolve, n-butanol. It is shown that the value of the sorption volume of zeolite for each class of compounds depends on the certain factors: the length and structure of the carbon skeleton, the position of the hydroxyl group (for alcohols and esters), number of methyl groups in the molecules (for benzene derivatives). The conversion of the mixed solvent components was 65.4–90.1 %.

Crystal-structure of active layers of small molecule organic photovoltaics before and after solvent vapor annealing

It is demonstrated by a detailed structural analysis that the crystallinity and the efficiency of small molecule based organic photovoltaics can be tuned by solvent vapor annealing (SVA). Blends made of the small molecule donor 2,2′-[(3,3′″,3″″,4′-tetraoctyl[2,2′:5′,2″:5″,2′″:5′″,2″″-quinquethiophene]-5,5″″-diyl)bis[(Z)-methylidyne(3-ethyl-4-oxo-5,2-thiazolidinediylidene)]]bis-propanedinitrile (DRCN5T) and the acceptor [6,6]-phenyl C71 butyric acid methyl ester (PC71BM) were annealed using solvent vapors with either a high solubility for the donor (tetrahydrofuran), the acceptor (carbon disulfide) or both (chloroform). The samples were analyzed by grazing-incidence wide-angle X-ray scattering (GIWAXS), electron diffraction, X-ray pole figures, and time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS). A phase separation of DRCN5T and PC71BM is induced by SVA leading to a crystallization of DRCN5T and the formation of a DRCN5T enriched layer. The DRCN5T crystallites possess the two dimensional oblique crystal system with the lattice parameters a = 19.2 Å, c = 27.1 Å, and β = 111.1° for the chloroform case. No major differences in the crystal structure for the other solvent vapors were observed. However, the solvent choice strongly influences the size of the DRCN5T enriched layer. Missing periodicity in the [010]-direction leads to the extinction of all Bragg reflections with k ≠ 0. The annealed samples are randomly orientated with respect to the normal of the substrate (fiber texture).