Characterization of atypical polyaniline nano-structures prepared via advanced techniques

Abstract

Conductive polymers had been the topic of a vast number of investigations during the last decades, so, the synthesis of conducting polymers and study of their physical properties has been of prime importance. One of these conductive polymers is polyaniline. The current work is to prepare polyaniline (PANI) nanostructured material via four different preparation techniques which were sol-gel, rapid mixing, sonochemical and supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) assisted polymerization. The morphology of the prepared PANI samples was determined using Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The molecular structure of prepared PANI samples was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The electrical conductivity of the synthesized samples was assessed by using the four-probe method at room temperature. The surface area of the prepared samples was determined using Brunauer Emmett Teller (BET). The characterization results of the prepared PANI confirm that the morphology, chemical composition, crystallinity, conductivity and surface area were altered significantly as a consequence of its synthesis via atypical techniques. Keywords: Polyaniline nano-structures, Nanoparticles, Nanorods, Nanofibers, Sonochemical, Sol gel, Rapid mixing polymerization, Supercritical carbon dioxide assisted polymerization, Polyaniline characterization