Among the various classes of conducting polymers, the polyanilines are one of the most interesting due to high electrical conductivity, a straightforward and scalable synthesis, a wide range of accessible oxidation states and doping levels, high environmental stability, and tunable morphology. These polymers must be soluble or dispersible if they are to be processed into thin films for specific applications. The first strategy towards high quality dispersions of polyaniline utilizes chemical derivation in order to produce poly(ethylaniline) homopolymers by chemical oxidative polymerization. This resulted in poly(ethylaniline), which was more soluble in common organic solvents than the unsubstituted polyaniline parent polymer. The second strategy involves speeding up the polymerization reaction kinetics by the introduction of a small-molecule initiator such as p-phenylene diamine. We observed that by addition of an initiator to the polymerization reaction, nanofibers of poly(ethylaniline) can be produced in high yield. These nanofibers of poly(ethylaniline) disperse well in water and ethanol. ?1?H NMR spectroscopy was used to investigate the resultant monomer ratios incorporated into the copolymers produced by a polymerization mixture of the parent monomer aniline and either 2, or 3-ethylaniline. Results indicate that 2-ethylaniline reacts faster than the parent monomer, but that under diffusion limited conditions, the ratio of aniline:ethylaniline incorporated increased. We also found that copolymer nanofibers made from mixed monomer solutions of aniline and ethylaniline were produced in all stoichiometries when an initiator was present. Resistivity measurements on dropcast films show that incorporation of as little as 25 percent ethylaniline into the copolymer increased the sheet resistance of films by three orders of magnitude.

Synthesis of poly(aniline-co-ethylaniline) nanofibers by rapidly-initiated oxidative polymerization

245th National Meeting (2013)

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