Sensing alcohol vapours with novel unsymmetrically substituted metallophthalocyanines.

Unsymmetrically substituted phthalocyanines were synthesized by the well-known statistical condensation method using two differently substituted precursors, 4-tert-butylphthalonitrile and 4-(4-pyrrol-1-yl)phenoxyphthalonitrile. Spin-coated thin films of these compounds were subsequently exposed to varying concentrations of methanol, ethanol and butanol between 25 and 150 ppm in order to investigate the effects of the number of carbon atoms in the alcohol vapors. The results of this preliminary investigation indicated that sensor performance parameters such as sensitivity, response and recovery time strongly depend on the number of carbon atoms in the analyte molecules.