Synthesis, Processing and Characterization of Nanostructured Conducting Materials

Abstract

Several novel synthesis approaches target to precisely control the nano-structures of electric organic polymers have been studied and these methods can afford to yield nanostructured electric organic polymers, (i) conducting polymer nanoclips by using reactive template method, i.e., “oxidative template” approach; (ii) conducting polymer/transition metal nanocomposites by “seeding approach”. Usually conducting polymers like polyaniline, polypyrrole, poly-3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene (PEDOT) are oxidative polymerized by corresponding monomers using (NH4)2S2O8 (APS) as the oxidant. It is of technological importance to construct “oxidative template” by oxidant APS and surfactant chemical to form nano-precipitation templates which can confine the lattice oriented growth while offering oxidization property for further polymerization. Furthermore, after examining the oxidation potential of different reaction media, i.e., metal salts’ aqueous electrolyte solutions, it is found a novel, facile, one-step and seed-assisted oxidative polymerization reactions can help produce one dimensional conducting polymer with decoration of transitional metal nanoparticles. Microwave irradiation approach “Poptube” has been emerged as a novel approach and used as a robust tool to promote ultrafast carbon nanotube (CNT) growth by using conducting polymer as heating source and metallocene as precursors. This solid state microwave reaction of great engineering importance, does not require any additional inert gas protection while can yield only CNTs growth at room temperature in air with only 15–30 seconds.