Conductive cotton fabric developed by in-situ polymerization of aniline

摘要

This paper reports studies in-situ polymerization of aniline on cotton fabric to develop conductive properties. Plain weave cotton fabric was treated with ammonium persulphate as oxidant, hydrochloric acid as a dopant and aniline monomer to produce in-situ polyaniline (PAn).This polymerization of polyaniline cotton substrates was carried out in water circulating bath for maintaining desired polymerization temperature. The synthesizing parameters which govern the properties of the resulting conductive fabrics such as monomer concentration, oxidant concentration, monomer and oxidant molar ratio, polymerization time, polymerization temperature were studied. The polyaniline coated cotton fabrics are also characterized for their electrical, morphology, physical and mechanical properties. The conductivity of the fabric was in the range 10~(-5) to 10~(-3) S/cm. The polymerization temperature of 5 ℃ and polymerization duration of 4h is found to be optimum for the synthesis.