Interfacial behaviour of polyaniline as an organic electronic material

This paper reports on investigations carried out to study the behaviour of contacts between polyaniline and surface electron-rich solids. The objective of the study was to study polymer-conducting system hybrids. Experiments were carried out on three metals, graphite sheets and on indium arsenide. The results show that in the case of metals, where there is good alignment of the metal's Fermi level with the LUMO bands of the polymer one gets a lower contact resistance. With graphite a good, low resistance, ohmic contact was obtained whereas with indium arsenide a non-linear I–V characteristic was observed. Behaviour of a polyaniline–silica–silicon structure is also described where gate-controlled conductivity enhancement was observed.

► In this work we explore interfaces of conducting solids with polyaniline.
► We describe the preparation of hybrids containing polyaniline films.
► We also describe the field-effect in polyaniline.