In-situ synthesis of polypyrrole-mycosporine like amino acid nanocomposite film for resistive UV-B sensor

We report in-situ synthesis of novel nanocomposite film (∼60 nm) of Mycosporine-like amino acids (MAAs) and Polypyrrole (PPy). These films were synthesized by interfacial polymerization technique. PPy is one of the most promising conductive polymer materials for multifunctional applications. MAAs is an important group of novel bioactive compounds having immense biotechnological potentials due to their UV screening properties. A resistive UV sensor is fabricated by depositing the nanocomposite film onto a silicon chip. The fabricated UV sensor shows significant enhancement in photocurrent upon illumination of UV (334 nm) light and as compared to only PPy film. The change in photocurrent from dark to UV radiation (334 nm) is up to 90%, indicating that this nanocomposite film has good sensitivity for the UV radiation. The response time of the fabricated UV-B sensor is less than 1 second. This study shows new pathway to utilize MAAs for UV sensing applications.