Synthesis of highly conductive polyaniline nanofibers

Polyaniline nanofiber product synthesized by using both potassium biiodate, KH(IO3)2, and sodium hypochlorite oxidant shows high electrical conductivity of greater than 100 S cm− 1. The nanofiber product also shows not only a long nano-size fibril structure with average diameter of ~ 50 nm and length of ~ 4 μm but also high crystallinity. It was observed that the nanofibers synthesized using the two oxidants give both high electrical conductivity and high crystallinity compared to polyaniline synthesized using commonly known ammonium peroxydisulfate (APS) oxidant. We also found that dimensional and morphological uniformity of PANI nanofibers were greatly improved when the two oxidants were used. The long length and high crystallinity will probably be the contributing factors to have high conductivity. Order of the oxidant addition for the synthesis has no effect on quality of the product. Characterization study was made via UV/Vis absorption spectra, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) as well as conductivity measurement.