Inorganic-organic hybrid material ormed between silica sol-gel and polyaniline.

摘要

There is an increasing interest in inorganic-organic hybrids as electrodes and solid electrolytes. We are studying hybrids formed by a combination of a conducting polymer with a sol-gel matrix. Nanostructured materials are obtained with novel complementary physico-chemical properties. The resulting materials have electrical and optical properties inherent to the polymers but have better mechanical, thermal and chemical resistance than the polymer alone. Electroactive polymers (e.g. polyaniline and polypyrrole) were inserted into porous silica sol-gels by a template synthesis (1,2). The pores of the inorganic solid serve as template that determines the size of the synthesized product. We are exploring the idea of controlling the process of aniline polymerization by varying the pore size of the silica. The resulting inorganic-organic hybrid may be used as thin films (i.e. as conventional modified electrodes) or in a form of bulk solid or semi-rigid systems of the gelling matrix (i.e. by solid-state voltammetry in the absence of contact with liquid electrolyte phase).