Fabrication of electrospun aligned nanofibers from conducting polyaniline copolymer/polyvinyl alcohol/chitosan oligossacaride in aqueous solutions

• Electrospun aligned nanofibers fabricated from polyaniline copolymer and PVA–chitosan.
• Biopolymers worked as a binder for fabricating polyaniline nanofibers.
• The hybrid nanofibers exploit as possible hydrogen bonds between copolymer and biopolymers.
• Integrating the conductive copolymer in the nanofibers, found superior thermal stability.

Conducting polyaniline and o-aminobenzenesulfonic acid copolymer (PAni-co-PABSA)/poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/chitosan oligossacaride (COS) nanofibers have been fabricated by the electrospinning technique. Firstly, polyaniline copolymer is synthesized by the in situ polymerization method to make PAni derivatives as a soluble polymer. Secondly, PVA and COS polymers are incorporated with PAni copolymer in an electrospinning technique for fabricating aligned nanofiber mats. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transforms infrared (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA) were utilized to characterize the PAni-co-PABSA/PVA/COS fibers’ morphology and properties. FT-IR and XRD data demonstrated that there were possible hydrogen bonds between PAni-co-PABSA, COS and PVA molecules, which could weak the interaction in COS itself and improve PAni-co-PABSA/PVA/COS electrospinnability. Moreover, with the addition of PAni-co-PABSA in the PVA/COS blend fibers, the superior thermal stability could be obtained.