Polyaniline nanofibers synthesized by rapid mixing polymerization

Polyaniline (PANI) nanofibers were chemically synthesized by a rapid mixing polymerization with aniline concentration of 0.5 M. The time needed for the formation of PANI in the reaction medium decreased with increase of the molar ratio of ammonium peroxydisulphate (APS)/aniline and temperature. Morphological study showed at the end of polymerization, only the ones prepared with low molar ratio of APS/aniline (e.g. 0.25 and 0.50) and temperature (e.g. 0 and 20 °C) are nanofibers with diameters of ∼50 nm, though the initially formed products are all nanofibers, while with increasing of molar ratio of APS/aniline to 1 and temperature to 20 °C or higher, agglomerates of PANI nanofibers with diameters of ∼100 nm and larger sized irregular particles were formed. The yield of PANI nanofibers was in the range of 13.4–42.3%, which is favorable for mass production of PANI nanofibers. Conductivity measurement, UV–vis and FTIR spectra were performed to characterize the products. The conductivity of the PANI nanofibers increased with molar ratio of APS/aniline at low temperature, while decreased at higher temperature, which might be resulted from the degradation of PANI molecules in the presence of more APS molecules at higher temperature.