Phenol Assisted Deaggregation of Polyaniline Chains: Simple Route to High Quality Polyaniline Film

Mediation of water-soluble oligoaniline by phenol in the aniline-persulfate system under alkaline conditions

Although synthesis of oligoaniline (OANI) by persulfate and aniline has been investigated in the recent years, the impact of phenol on the synthesized soluble OANI is still not clear. In this study, our results indicate that phenol and pH mediate the production of the blue water-soluble OANI (OANI_blue) in the reaction between sodium persulfate (SPS) and aniline under alkaline conditions, and the yields of OANI_blue increase with increasing concentrations of phenol and pH values. Quenching experiments rule out the contributions of SO₄˙^- and ˙OH to aniline oxidation and imply that the non-radical activation of SPS is an important pathway in the formation of OANI_blue. MALDI-TOF-MS analysis indicates that phenol apparently inhibits the polymerization degree of aniline in that the molecular weights of OANI_blue gradually decrease from 1586.4 to 684.6 when phenol is increased from 0 to 2.0 mM. FTIR and Raman analyses confirm the structure of aniline oligomers in OANI_blue and indicate that phenol inhibits the phenazine-like structure in OANI_blue and facilitates the transformation of benzenoid rings to quinoid rings in the oxidation products. However, simultaneous activation of SPS by phenol and aniline is likely to occur in the reaction system with the formation of PhNH˙, as indicated by DFT calculations. The high scavenging reactivity of phenol towards both PhNH₂˙⁺ and PhNH˙ implies that PhNH₂˙⁺ and PhNH˙ are not the intermediates in the formation of OANI_blue. DFT calculations also reveal that apart from the one-electron transfer pathway between aniline and SPS, the two-electron transfer pathway is also likely to occur in the presence of phenol, resulting in the formation of PhNH⁺/PhN˙˙ without producing PhNH₂˙⁺ and PhNH˙. The produced PhNH⁺/PhN˙˙ intermediates then couple with aniline, PhNH⁺, aminophenyl sulfate and its hydrolysate to form dimers, trimers, oligomers, and eventually OANI_blue. This study not only describes a novel method to prepare water-soluble OANI, but also gives new insight on the importance of phenol in the production of OANI_blue.

Towards cost-effective silicon anodes using conductive polyaniline-encapsulated silicon micropowders

To overcome the remaining issues of nanostructured Si anode, we investigated the feasibility towards practically viable Si anode by combining low-cost material precursors with facile and scalable processes.

Structural-controlled synthesis of polyaniline nanoarchitectures using hydrothermal method

Three new polyaniline (PANI) micro/nanostructures featuring square nanosheets, microspheres and microdisks are successfully synthesized via hydrothermal method. Uniform sizes and thickness of highly crystalline PANI square structural nanosheets can be tuned by the oxidation polymerization in the presence of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as a template. Mechanistic studies indicate that concentrations of aniline and CTAB, reaction temperature and time have great influence on the morphology of PANI polymers. Particularly, CTAB is essential to determine the morphology of synthetic PANI. In aqueous solution at extremely high temperature and pressure, CTAB provides various self-assembly of micelles, such as spherical micelle, planar bilayer, and lamellar phase, in which corresponding micro/nanostructures are formed. This hydrothermal fabrication gives an excellent example for the preparation of well-defined two-dimensional PANI micro/nanomaterials and potentially for other synthetic polymers.

Preparation, characterization and application of polyaniline nanospheres to biosensing

Polyaniline nanospheres (PANI-NS) prepared by morphological transformation of micelle polymerized camphorsulfonic acid (CSA) doped polyaniline nanotubes (PANI-NT) in the presence of ethylene glycol (EG) have been characterized by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infra-red and UV-Visible spectroscopy. A PANI-NS (60-80 nm) film deposited onto an indium-tin-oxide (ITO) coated glass plate by the solution casting method has been utilized for covalent immobilization of biomolecules (cholesterol oxidase (ChOx)) viaN-ethyl-N'-(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide (EDC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) chemistry for fabrication of a cholesterol biosensor. The ChOx/PANI-NS/ITO bioelectrode detects cholesterol in the concentration range of 25 to 500 mg dL(-1) with sensitivity of 1.3 x 10(-3) mA mg(-1) dL and regression coefficient of 0.98. Further, this PANI-NS based bioelectrode shows fast response time (10 s), low Michaelis-Menten constant (2.5 mM) and shelf-life of 12 weeks. The spherical nanostructure observed in the final morphology of the PANI-NS film is attributed to hydrogen bonding interactions between PANI-NT and EG.