Catalytic electroxidation pathway for electropolymerization of polypyrrole in solutions containing gold nanoparticles

We report here the first electrochemical polymerization of polypyrrole (PPy) on Au substrates in aqueous solutions containing additives of prepared Au nanoparticles with a diameter of ca. 2 nm. Encouragingly, the synthesized PPy films demonstrate novel characteristics due to the effects of Au nanoparticles, which provide a catalytic electroxidation pathway. The prepared PPy shows a stereomorphology, which is distinguishable from the typically granular raspberry morphology of pure PPy, and a rougher surface. The conductivity of PPy is significantly increased (∼10 times), which also reflects on the extremely high oxidation level of 0.36 revealed from the analysis of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The mechanism of the nucleation and growth, and the X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern were investigated to explain the specific characteristics of PPy films.