Phosphine sensing mechanism in conducting Langmuir-Blodgett films based on tetracyanoquinodimethane and ethylenedithiotetrathiofulvalene derivatives

Abstract This paper presents the results of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry experiments performed to obtain information about the sensing mechanism involved in the detection of phosphine by conducting Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) films based on TCNQ and EDT-TTF derivatives. In contrast to the EDT-TTF based LB films, it is shown that with the TCNQ derivative the action of phosphine (PH 3 ) results in the insertion of phosphine subproducts in the LB film. This information is correlated with the general behaviour of each film towards phosphine detection.