Electrical and morphological properties of poly(3-hexyl thiophene) irradiated with 100 MeV silver ions

Poly(3-hexyl thiophene) has been prepared by a chemical oxidation process. The pristine polymer was irradiated with various fluences of (silver (Ag8+)) swift heavy ions viz. 1010, 1011, and 1012 ions/cm2. All the samples, irradiated and without irradiation, have been characterized by various techniques such as surface electron microscopy (SEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), FT-IR and UV spectroscopy. The dc conductivity of all the samples has been investigated in 77–300 K. The room temperature conductivity of pristine samples is 2.39 × 10−8 which increases to 1.65 × 10−6 Ohm−1 cm−1 at the fluence of 1011 ions/cm2. The observed conduction mechanism for all the samples could be explained in terms of Mott's variable range hopping model.