Improving Electrical Conductivity, Thermal Stability, and Solubility of Polyaniline-Polypyrrole Nanocomposite by Doping with Anionic Spherical Polyelectrolyte Brushes.

Na Su

doi:10.1186/s11671-015-0997-x

Abstract

The extent to which anionic spherical polyelectrolyte brushes (ASPB) as dopant improved the performance of polyaniline-polypyrrole (PANI-PPy) nanocomposite was investigated. Different characterization and analytical methods including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed that ASPB serving as dopant could improve the comprehensive properties of PANI-PPy nanocomposite. It was different from dopants such as SiO2, poly(sodium-p-styrenesulfonate) (PSS), and canonic spherical polyelectrolyte brushes (CSPB) which only enhanced the performance of PANI-PPy nanocomposite on one or two sides. The electrical conductivity of (PANI-PPy)/ASPB nanocomposite at room temperature was 8.3 S/cm, which was higher than that of PANI-PPy (2.1 S/cm), (PANI-PPy)/PSS (6.8 S/cm), (PANI-PPy)/SiO2 (7.2 S/cm), and (PANI-PPy)/CSPB (2.2 S/cm). Meanwhile, (PANI-PPy)/ASPB nanocomposite possessed enhanced thermal stability and good solubility. In addition, the effects of polymerization temperature, the molecular weight of grafted polyelectrolyte brushes, and storage time on electrical conductivity were discussed.

Highlights

During the last several decades, conducting polymers have been the subject of numerous investigations due to their excellent physical and chemical properties originating from their unique π-conjugated system [1,2,3]
This paper presented a facile method for the synthesis of (PANI-PPy)/anionic spherical polyelectrolyte brushes (ASPB) nanocomposite by chemical oxidative polymerization
In order to demonstrate that the conducting composites are composed of copolymers of aniline and pyrrole, XRD Patterns The crystallographic structure of the samples is probed by X-ray diffraction

Summary

Introduction

During the last several decades, conducting polymers have been the subject of numerous investigations due to their excellent physical and chemical properties originating from their unique π-conjugated system [1,2,3]. Among the conducting polymers studied, polyaniline (PANI) and polypyrrole (PPy) are of particular interest because of their promising electrical conductivity, high environmental stability, interesting redox properties, magnetoresistance (MR) behaviors, and electrochemical performances [4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. In comparison with numerous reports about PANI and PPy, researches on copolymers of aniline and pyrrole are still far from enough. Su Nanoscale Research Letters (2015) 10:301 sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) as a surfactant. They found that the nanocomposite had high electrical conductivity by selecting proper conditions for the synthesis process. Li et al [17] proposed a method to prepare poly(pyrrole-co-aniline) nanofibrils using a template by chemical copolymerization technique. Since the properties of conducting polymers are mutually restraining, the improvement of their comprehensive performance is an important and difficult task

Methods

Results

Conclusion