Nano-Assembly of Conducting Polyaniline and Polypyrrole by Using Biological Templates from Nano to Micro Scales

摘要

Conducting polymers have received much attention due to their excellent electronic and optical properties. Among these conducting polymers, polyaniline (PANI) and polypyrrole (PPy) have been widely used in a variety of applications such as batteries, chemical sensors, antistatic coatings, and nanodevices. However, the directly polymerized PANI and PPy are difficult to fabricate due to their low solubility in most solvents. To solve this problem, several strategies have been developed such as the synthesis of soluble PANI and PPy with long alkyl side groups, and doping with acids carrying a long alkyl side chains. A promising approach to get the desired morphology of PANI or PPy was to use “hard” or “soft” templates. Although various architectures of PANI or PPy have been prepared by using the templating approach, the fabrication was limited by the availability of the templates. Here we reported a simple and general method to prepare various nano- and micro-structures of PANI and PPy by using different biological templates (bacterial flagellar filaments and cells). By using the biological templating method, we can fabricate PANI or PPy with various nano- or micro-structures that are well defined by the architectures of the biological templates used in the aqueous solution and at the ambient temperature. This biological templating approach will open up a new way for the fabrication of conducting nano- or micro- materials and devices.