Correlation between conductance and mass changes during p-doping of 2-methoxynaphthalene films

The redox response of 2-methoxynaphthalene films electrosynthesized in two different organic solvents, acetonitrile (ACN) and nitrobenzene (NB) has been studied by different in situ electrochemical techniques: the in situ conductance technique, electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance (EQCM) and electrochemical voltage spectroscopy (EVS). In situ measurements of conductance as a function of the potential during p-doping of 2-methoxynaphthalene films, electrosynthesized in TBAPF6-ACN and TBAPF6-NB, show that the conductance properties are strongly dependent on the solvent used during electrosynthesis, resulting in higher conductance values for films electrosynthesized in NB solutions. The EQCM technique has been used to correlate the frequency changes (mass changes) at the electrode surface with conductance changes during p-doping of the different films. The molar mass of the species involved in the charging–discharging reactions has been estimated from the EQCM results. For the determination of the electrochemical bandgap of the two different films, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and EVS were applied. Films electrosynthesized in NB solutions have a lower value of the bandgap (1.34 eV) than films electrosynthesized in ACN solutions (2.00 eV).