Preparation and characterization of conductive blends of polyaniline with polyphenol red

Abstract

Polymers are widely employed in biomedical applications, pharmaceutical product formulation, and drug delivery systems. Since every polymer has its own distinct properties, polymer blends will have novel chemical and physical properties. Functionally, the purpose of blending polymers is to improve, customize, or maximize material performance. In this study, polyaniline and polyphenol red polymer mixtures were prepared electrochemically and characterized with XPS imaging and SEM whether their distribution was homogeneous. The mixture of aniline and phenol red was deposited glassy carbon electrode (GCE) surface using the cyclic voltammetry technique in the potential range of -0.80 V to 2.00 V with 50 mV/s scan rate for 25 cycles. The phase separation of the two polymers was demonstrated by a combination of spectroscopic imaging and microscopy. For this purpose, the X-ray spot size and step number were set to 50μm. 1 x 1 mm2 area scan of the polymer mixtures was performed, and spectra were obtained at each pixel in an array of 20 x 20 pixels. Chemical imaging was obtained by applying Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to collected XPS survey spectra. For the morphological characterization, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was employed, and images were obtained at magnifications of 5000 x. The results obtained in the mixtures prepared with 5%, 10% and 25% were better compared to the mixture prepared with 50% polyphenol red. Since the X-ray spot size is limited, the desired image resolution could not be obtained. It was shown that XPS imaging studies could also be used for examining the distribution of different and unknown polymer mixtures together with SEM.