We are trying to deposit Polyaniline nanofibers which are conducting on polymer substrate (poly Urethane) I would like to know if there is any any way to do it by chemical polymerization with APS.
Guidance in the form of papers will be highly appreciate
In general, it is very difficult (I think it's not good idea). Most of reports don't use chemical polymerization for deposition; they use electrochemical route because the use (control) of potential help the formation of high quality film. If you try to use chemical polymerization, it's very hard to obtain a desirable thickness (or height). Although, in theory, we can control them by tuning the concentration of oxidant and monomer, but, in experiment, we cannot.
A solution for deposition by chemical polymerization is the polymerization in vaphor phase; for example, vapor phase polymerization or chemical vapor deposition.
Hence, in your case, I recommend 2 suggestion:
1. If you want to deposit by chemical polymerization in aqueous solution, the fist thing you should to do is "how to deposition?", don't focus on PU or PANI nanofiber, you can be the first man do that. The substrate in chemical polymerization cannot attract monomer, this is the disadvantage of chemical approach.
2. You can deposit by chemical vapor phase. The problem is "how to disperse the oxidant (APS) onto the surface of PU"
You can find useful informations in the paper of our group:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn3033425
Dear Shah
Just in case spinning the polyaniline nanofibers onto your substrate would be an option:
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep19858
Regards Marc
why do you want to deposit Polyaniline nanofibres? also the nanofibres consist of about 10 nm small primary particles, so for conductivity and charge carrier transport mechanism there is no difference between nanofibres and other thin layers.
If you keep you PU in a chemical PAni polymerisation reaction (run the reaction while cooling well! make the reaction to run very slowly!), then you may succeed in depositing a thin well adhering PAni layer on your PU substrate.
You can find lots of literature in my RG site.
Mr bernhard,
I wonder that we can obtain well adhering layer by cooling the process. From my experience, by controlling the kinetic of polymerization, the only thing we can receive is the change of shape and size of results. For example, slow polymerization will lead to 1D structure, and fast polymerization will result in nano-particles. Which basic or article(s)do you use to confirm that?
An article for chemical deposition of CPs: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032386100008004
But, in my opinion, chemical deposition is a bad choice (for adhesion)
The adhesion is quite often a problem, correct, but can be enhanced by suitable pretreatment of the substrate surface. They need to play a little bit and study.
Definitely, the best way is to prepare dispersions, then deposit, but that requires a lot of experience and technology, most people don't succeed.
Chemical deposition is easier and leads to quite acceptable (not optimal though, but just ok) results.
Just a short comment to Nguyen: any Polyaniline, ANY conductive polymer consists of about 10 nm small primary particles, "primary particle" meaning: these are the smallest units which show polyaniline properties (especially ellectrical properties). What you refer to with "1D" and "nanoparticles" is simply the way how these 10 nm primary particles aggregate then showing different morphologies (also nanofibres are nothing else than a secondary morphology of the - in this case more pearl-chain like) arrangement of the same 10 nm primary particles),
Dear Bernhard and Nguyen , thank-you for such useful suggestions. I learned quite a lot from this discussion. Anyways, We have succeeded in growing polyaniline conducting film on PU, but have not confirmed the morphology yet. But coating is adequately adherent and conducting.
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