Facile and efficient route for preparation of nanostructured polyaniline thin films: Schematic model for simplest oxidative chemical polymerization

More purposely, the current paper is related to “bottom-up” approach chemical method for preparation of polyaniline (PANI) via simplest oxidative chemical polymerization. The paper portrays advantages of facile chemical method successive ionic layer adsorption and reaction (SILAR) for depositing fused nanorods structured PANI in the thin film form onto the large-scale area efficiently. The deposition of PANI thin films have been carried out onto cost-effective glass and stainless steel substrates of large area. The two beaker SILAR system is adopted with aqueous acidic aniline solution in H2SO4 as cationic source and solution of ammonium persulfate in double distilled water as anionic precursor for deposition purpose at room temperature. The physico-chemical characteristics of deposited films were studied via analysis of structural, morphological, surface wettability, optical and electrical properties. The amorphous PANI film with fused nanorods showed hydrophilic nature with water contact angle of 56°. Electrical and optical properties revealed that, p-type conductivity PANI with room temperature resistivity of 0.84 Ω cm has band gap of 3.2 eV.