Studies of structural, optical, dielectric relaxation and ac conductivity of different alkylbenzenesulfonic acids doped polypyrrole nanofibers

Polypyrrole (PPy) nanofibers doped with alkylbenzenesulfonic acids (ABSA) have been synthesized using interfacial polymerization method. HRTEM studies confirm the formation of PPy nanofibers with average diameter ranging from 13 nm to 25 nm. Broad X-ray diffraction peak in 2θ2θ range 20–23.46° reveals amorphous structure of PPy nanofibers. The ordering or crystallinity of polymer chains increases, while their interplanar spacing (d) and interchain separation (R  ) decreases for short alkyl chain ABSA doped PPy nanofibers. FTIR studies reveal that short alkyl chain ABSA doped PPy nanofibers show higher value of “effective conjugation length”. PPy nanofibers doped with short alkyl chain ABSA dopant exhibit smaller optical band gap. TGA studies show enhanced thermal stability of short alkyl chain ABSA doped PPy nanofibers. Decrease in dielectric permittivity ε′(ω)ε′(ω) with increasing frequency suggests presence of electrode polarization effects. Linear decrease in dielectric loss ε″(ω)ε″(ω) with increasing frequency suggests dominant effect of dc conductivity process. Low value of non-exponential exponent ββ (<1) reveals non-Debye relaxation of charge carriers. Scaling of imaginary modulus (M″)(M″) reveals that the charge carriers follow the same relaxation mechanism. Moreover, the charge carriers in PPy nanofibers follow the correlated barrier hopping (CBH) transport mechanism.