Highly Permeable Fluorinated Polymer Nanocomposites for Plasmonic Hydrogen Sensing.

Hydrogen (H) sensors that can be produced with cost-effective manufacturing tools are critical for enabling safety in the emerging hydrogen economy. The use of melt-processed nanocomposites in this context would allow the combination of the advantages of plasmonic hydrogen detection with polymer technology; an approach which is held back by the slow diffusion of H through the polymer matrix. Here, we show that the use of an amorphous fluorinated polymer, compounded with colloidal Pd nanoparticles prepared by highly scalable continuous flow synthesis, results in nanocomposites that display a high H diffusion coefficient in the order of 10 cm s. As a result, plasmonic optical hydrogen detection with melt-pressed fluorinated polymer nanocomposites is no longer limited by the diffusion of the H analyte to the Pd nanoparticle transducer elements, despite a thickness of up to 100 μm, thereby enabling response times as short as 2.5 s at 100 mbar (≡10 vol. %) H. Evidently, plasmonic sensors with a fast response time can be fabricated with thick, melt-processed nanocomposites, which paves the way for a new generation of robust H sensors.