Conducting Polymers with Fibrillar Morphology Synthesized in a Biphasic Ionic Liquid/Water System

Abstract

The synthesis of poly(pyrrole), poly(terthiophene), and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) with unusual fibrillar morphologies has been achieved by chemical polymerization in a biphasic ionic liquid/water system. Use of aqueous gold chloride as the oxidant, with the monomers dissolved in a hydrophobic ionic liquid, allows the polymerization to occur at the ionic liquid/water interface. The resultant conducting polymer fibrils are, on average, 50−100 nm wide and can be thousands of nanometers long. The polymers produced in this ionic liquid system are compared to those synthesized in a biphasic chloroform/water system.

Spectroscopy of Nanostructured Conducting Polymers

“…Poly(terthiophene) and poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) with fibrillar (50-100 nm) morphologies have been achieved by chemical polymerization in a biphasic ionic liquid/water system [150]. The formation of the polymers was confirmed by UV-vis, Raman and other techniques, which suggested that the physical properties of these materials are similar to those of the bulk polymer material.…”

A Template‐Free Route to Polypyrrole Nanofibers

“…A variety of methods have been employed to synthesize 1-D nanostructures of polypyrrole, ranging from the use of V 2 O 5 nano-seeds, to functional dopants or cationic surfactants like cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB), or through the use of hard templating techniques. [4][5][6][7] Communication A template-free method for the production of polypyrrole nanofibers is presented. By adding a small amount of bipyrrole into the oxidative polymerization of pyrrole, a drastic change in the morphology of the observed material is observed from large, granular particles to nanofibrils with an average diameter of 20 nm.…”

Ionic liquid – Assisted emulsion polymerization of aniline in organic medium

“…The use of surfactants, also denoted as "soft template", has been considered as an interesting strategy for tuning the PAni morphology and improving its processability [14]. Following similar approach, ionic liquids also play an important role in the morphology [15e17], electrochemical properties [18] and dielectric properties of PAni. In fact, ionic liquids have been successfully employed as a solvent or additive for the electropolymerization [19e22], photo-induced polymerization [23] and chemical oxidative polymerization [15e17,24e26], as well as enzymatic polymerization of aniline [27].…”