Electrospun polyaniline fibers synthesized by green route

Electrospun polyaniline fibers synthesized by green route P. Fronteraa, M. Lo Faroc, C .Busaccaa, P. L. Antonuccia, E. Fallettab,C. Della Pinab, M.Rossib a: Dipartimento Meccanica e Materiali, Facoltà di Ingegneria, Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria , via Graziella loc. Feo di Vito 89124, Reggio Calabria, Italy. E-mail: pierluigi.antonucci@unirc.it, patrizia.frontera@unirc.it, b: Dipartimento di Chimica Inorganica, Metallorganica e Analitica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Venezian 21, 20133 Milano, Italy. E-mail: cristina.dellapina@unimi.it, ermelinda.falletta@unimi.it, michele.rossi@unimi.it, c: CNR-ITAE, salita Santa Lucia sopra Contesse 5, 98126 Messina Italy. E-mail: lofaro@itae.cnr.it, Nanowires of conducting polymers constitute an interesting class of materials for many applications (electronic, magnetic, biomedical and optical approaches).[1] Electrospinning method has emerged as a promising technique to produce well aligned wires and fibers with nanometric diameters that magnifies the intrachain percolation especially in conductive polymers.[2] In our work, high purity bulk PANI was prepared by a “green” oxidative polymerization of N-4-aminophenyl aniline using hydrogen peroxide as oxidant, under mild conditions in aqueous solution.[3] The polymeric material was identified as conductive emeraldine salt by many spectroscopic techniques as FT-IR, UV-vis and X-ray diffractions. Because of its poor solubility in common solvents, PANI cannot be directly processed by electrospinning. In this work we have operated reducing the amount of PEO in order to produce PANI wires more pure and we reported the effect of the amount of PEO added in the batches on the morphology of PANI nanofibers and on their resulting electronic conductivity. Scanning electron microscopy has been used to evaluate the morphology of the resultant electrospun fibers. Both the bulk doped PANI and the spun composite fibers have been characterized by means of the complex impedance spectroscopy (EIS) for measuring the electrical conductivity under 0 V, 0.5 V and 1 V at room temperature and static air. [1] M. Li, Y. Guo, Y. Wei, A. G. MacDiarmid, P. y. Lelkes, Biomaterials 27 (2006) 2705. [2] S. Ramakrishina, K. Fujihara, W. E. Teo, T. C. Lim, Z. Ma, An Introduction to Eectrospinning and Nanofibers; World Scientific, Singapore (2005). [3] Z. Chen, C. Della Pina, E. Falletta, M. Lo Faro, M. Pasta, M. Rossi, N. Santo, J. Catal. 259 (2008) 1.