Electrical Conductivity of Polyaniline Photocatalyst

Abstract

Theoretically, the photodegradation efficiency of a photocatalyst can be affected by its own electrical conductivity. Materials with different dopants might possess different electrical conductivities. Therefore, the use of dopants for PANI on electrical conductivity will be investigated on this research. PANI with different morphology including, nanotube, nanosphere, nanofiber, star-micro/nanostructure and leaf micro/nanostructure have been fabricated via template free method by using varied dopants (HA, HCl, and LT) and applied as the photocatalyst. The chemical structures and oxidation states of the prepared photocatalysts were confirmed by their FTIR and UV-Vis spectra. The electrical conductivity measurements of photocatalysts were tested by using four probe point method on PANI pellet while the morphological studies were obtained by using FESEM. Based on the results obtained, NT-PANI that possessed the nanotube morphology exhibited the highest electrical conductivity among all five photocatalyst (1.22 x 10-2 S/cm) leaving behind NSP-PANI (1.16 x 10-2 S/cm), NF-PANI (4.59 x 10-3), S-PANI (5.84 x 10-4 S/cm) and L-PANI (4.57 x 10-4 S/cm). Nanotube is more conductive as the nanostructure has higher surface area than the micro/nanostructure and nanotube possessed longer polymer chain hence it facilitates the electron jumping subsequently enhanced the conductivity of PANI.