CONDUCTING ISLANDS CONCEPT FOR HIGHLY CONDUCTIVE POLYANILINE - RECENT RESULTS OF TEM-MEASUREMENTS, X-RAY-DIFFRACTION-MEASUREMENTS, EPR-MEASUREMENTS, DC CONDUCTIVITY-MEASUREMENTS AND MAGNETIC SUSCEPTIBILITY-MEASUREMENTS

Polyaniline (PANI) is a prominent intrinsically conductive polymer, because of the unique combination of high conductivities and ease of preparing the polymer itself and technological useable products like films and fibres. Despite the commercial interest in PANI, it has also gained considerable interest by scientists. Central to their work are the charge carriers and the way in which they move in the anisotropic polymer structure. Recently, we succeeded in the preparation of TEM-pictures of highly conducting PANI. which strongly support the conducting island concept for polyaniline, proposed by Epstein et al. The current work presents the results of detailed X-ray-diffraction, EPR-, temperature-dependent d.c. conductivity- and magnetic susceptibility-measurements, performed to obtain a full understanding or the structure of our PANI powder as it results from the TEM investigations.