Templateless self-assembly of highly oriented polyaniline arrays

摘要

By polymerization at 80℃ and crystal growth at 0℃, highly oriented polyaniline flake and fiber arrays were self-assembled without any templates or surfactants.rnOriented conducting polymer nano- or micro-structures are highly desirable for applications, such as chemical and biological sensing, microelectronic devices, catalysis, energy conversion, optical emission and optical storage. Polyaniline (PANI) is one of the most promising conducting polymers due to its ease of synthesis, low cost, versatile processibility, and stable electrical conductivity. Template synthesis is a common method for synthesizing ordered micro-ano-conducting polymers. However, to obtain pure conducting polymer, the template has to be removed after the polymerization. This is difficult in most cases, and the ordered structure of resulting materials often are altered or even destroyed during the template removal. Recently, several oxidation polymerization methods to fabricate polyaniline nanofibers without surfactants or templates have been developed, such as inter-facial polymerization, rapidly mixed reaction, and dilute polymerization. However, these methods are fairly complicated and the yield and orientation of products are not good. In this communication, a facial templateless method for self-assembling highly oriented PANI arrays was developed.