Study on electrical conductivity of single polyaniline microtube

The PANI microtubes with diameter of 200 nm were synthesized by the template synthesis technique. The electrical conductivity of individual PANI microtube was measured directly in the template channel using scanning probe microscope (SPM). The average conductivity of the microtube is 5.81 S/cm, which is higher than that of bulk PANI (1.75 S/cm). The higher average conductivity is due to the enhancement of electrical conductivity caused by the confined environment and ordered structure of the template channels. Moreover, most of the conductivities of the microtubes are in the range of 100 S/cm magnitude, which suggests that the SPM method possesses good reproducibility and feasibility for conductivity measurement of individual microtubes.