The polymer composite of electrically conducting polyaniline with polyvinylidene fluoride is prepared to study the electrical conductivity and structural modifications. The electrical conductivity studies were made by varying frequency from 100 Hz to 5 MHz at room temperature. The AC conductivity remained almost constant at lower frequencies and for higher frequencies the conductivity increased. The PAni-PVDF composite exhibited better conductivity in comparison to the pure samples. The changes in dielectric properties against frequency variations were studied and exponential reduction in dielectric loss at very low frequencies was observed. The structural and morphological studies were carried out using XRD, FTIR, and SEM.

Malaria is still claiming lot of human lives around the globe every year; if the plasmodium infection is detected at an early stage, causalities can be minimized. The conventional malaria detection methods are costly, invasive, time consuming, non-portable and need expertise. Plasmodium infection in the blood affects red blood cells and which results emission of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) through breath. Recently attempts were made to detect these VOCs non-invasively through gas chromatography techniques. This work is aiming at the fabrication and characterization of a polymer based chemiresistor sensor to detect some particular VOCs. The nanomaterial for the polymer is synthesized using chemical method. The material for the sensor is prepared using four different protonic acid doped Polyaniline (PANI) samples. Then the doped polymer is drop coated on a ceramic substrates and their electrical characteristics studied through V-I characteristics at room temperature. The current variation across the leads for different voltage inputs has been studied. Also these samples were characterized through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), which confirms the acid doping morphology of the material. V-I characteristics were plotted and that found to be linear. On gasing with monoterpene vapour the sensor has shown linear resistance variation with good reversibility. The room temperature sensing of this sensor can be utilized to develop a handheld portable device for detection of malaria in a cost effective way.