Synthesis of Polyaniline-Cellulose Conductive Composites with Modified Initial Treatment of Cellulose

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Conductive polymers are polymers that can conduct electric current because they have conjugated double bonds. Polyaniline is one example of conductive polymers with advantages such as high conductivity, excellent environmental stability, and easy to be synthesized. Nevertheless, polyaniline still has disadvantages such as rigid physical properties that can limit its usage application. Some studies state that stiffness can be overcome by forming composites. Cellulose has been used as a matrix in making polyaniline composites because of its flexible nature. In this study, the synthesis of PANI-cellulose composites was carried out with five different treatment variations, including swelling pretreatment and without swelling pretreatment, reaction through sonication, and without sonication. This treatment difference aims to examine the effect of swelling and sonication processes on composite properties analyzed through peaks appear in Fourier Transformation Infrared spectrometry, conductivity using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy, as well as differences in the diffractogram of X-Ray Diffraction. In addition to the variations in the initial treatment, variations in the mass of the aniline were also used. The aim is to determine the optimum amount of aniline used to obtain a composite with the highest conductivity value. Inserting aniline to cellulose to synthesis PANI-cellulose composites affected the absorption peaks at wave numbers that identify C-N bonds in PANI-cellulose composites. Also, there are typical peaks of C-N indicated the formation of hydrogen bonds in the composite between PANI and cellulose. Analysis with EIS shows that composite C with an aniline concentration of 2.0 g/L has the highest conductivity, which is 4.77 x 10-6 S/cm. The diffractograms show the formation of organic compounds on PANI-cellulose composites, marked by the peak intensity and widen diffraction patterns.