High sensitivity Schottky junction diode based on monolithically grown aligned polypyrrole nanofibers: Broad range detection of m-dihydroxybenzene

• Aligned polypyrrole nanofibers thin film is grown by the electrochemical technique.
• p-aligned PPy NFs/n-silicon is utilized as Schottky diode to detect m-dihydroxybenzene.
• Schottky junction diode exhibits the rectifying behavior upon the addition of m-dihydroxybenzene.
• The reasonably high sensitivity of ∼23.67 μAmM−1cm−2 is achieved.

Aligned p-type polypyrrole (PPy) nanofibers (NFs) thin film was grown on n-type silicon (100) substrate by an electrochemical technique to fabricate Schottky junction diode for the efficient detection of m-dihydroxybenzene chemical. The highly dense and well aligned PPy NFs with the average diameter (∼150–200 nm) were grown on n-type Si substrate. The formation of aligned PPy NFs was confirmed by elucidating the structural, compositional and the optical properties. The electrochemical behavior of the fabricated Pt/p-aligned PPy NFs/n-silicon Schottky junction diode was evaluated by cyclovoltametry (CV) and current (I)-voltage (V) measurements with the variation of m-dihydroxybenzene concentration in the phosphate buffer solution (PBS). The fabricated Pt/p-aligned PPy NFs/n-silicon Schottky junction diode exhibited the rectifying behavior of I–V curve with the addition of m-dihydroxybenzene chemical, while a weak rectifying I–V behavior was observed without m-dihydroxybenzene chemical. This non-linear I–V behavior suggested the formation of Schottky barrier at the interface of Pt layer and p-aligned PPy NFs/n-silicon thin film layer. By analyzing the I–V characteristics, the fabricated Pt/p-aligned PPy NFs/n-silicon Schottky junction diode displayed reasonably high sensitivity ∼23.67 μAmM−1cm−2, good detection limit of ∼1.51 mM with correlation coefficient (R) of ∼0.9966 and short response time (10 s).

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