Interfacial polymerization of morphologically modified polyaniline: from hollow microspheres to nanowires

BACKGROUND: Polyaniline (PANI) has attracted much attention in many fields due to its chemical and physical properties, and different nanostructures of PANI changing from one-dimensional to three-dimensional have been obtained. By changing the concentration of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), the morphology of hydrochloric acid-doped polyaniline could be changed from one-dimensional nanoneedles or nanowires with a network structure (50-100nm in diameter) to three-dimensional hollow microspheres (ca 400mn in outer diameter) via combining interfacial polymerization and self-assembly process. RESULTS: These different nanostructures of PANI were proved using scanning electron and transmission electron microscopies. A plausible mechanism of the formation of the changeable nanostructures of PANI may be different from that of interfacial polymerization without surfactant or a traditional homogenous reaction system using CTAB as surfactant. CONCLUSION: The results obtained from Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, X-ray diffraction and the four-probe method showed that the molecular structure of PANI does not change with increasing CTAB concentration, but crystallinity and conductivity of PANI increase with surfactant concentration. (C) 2007 Society of Chemical Industry.