Electrical studies of PMMA blended with iron loaded polyaniline

Abstract

The blending of polyaniline (PAni) with insulating polymers is an active area of research which has been driven by the possibility to combine the good mechanical properties and processability of the polymer matrix with low electrical resistance. The present paper focuses on the electrical and optical behavior of Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) blended with different weight percent of PAni loaded with iron (Pani.Fe). We have synthesized PAni.Fe via oxidative chemical polymerization method using Ammonium Persulphate (APS) as oxidant. The conductivity of PAni.Fe powder was found to be 3.53⨯10−2 S/cm. Free standing films of PMMA-PAni.Fe blends were obtained through mixing of different weight % of as prepared PAni.Fe powder with PMMA by solution casting method taking Chloroform as solvent. In order to find the optical characteristics of blended films, these were subjected to UV-Visible-NIR spectroscopy. Conductivity and charge transportation behavior of these blends were analysed through V-I measurements. The optical energy gap of PMMA-PAni.Fe films was found to be reduced to 1.81 eV from 2.72 eV (pure PMMA) and dc conductivity is improved by 6 order in magnitude, with the addition of 10 wt. % of PAni.Fe in PMMA. The charge transportation, which is through Schottky-Richardson conduction mechanism for pure PMMA and its blends with lower concentrations of PAni.Fe also starts shifting towards Poole-Frenkel mechanism as the concentration of PAni.Fe is increased in PMMA-PAni.Fe blends.