Electrical, optical and dielectric properties of HCl doped polyaniline nanorods

In this report we have investigated the optical, electrical and dielectric properties of HCl doped polyaniline nanorods synthesized by the interfacial polymerization technique. High resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) micrographs confirm the formation of nanorods. X-ray diffraction pattern shows the semicrystalline nature of polyaniline nanorods with a diameter distribution in the range of 10–22 nm. The chemical and electronic structures of the polyaniline nanorods are investigated by micro-Raman and UV–vis spectroscopy. Dielectric relaxation spectroscopy has been applied to study the dielectric permittivity, modulus formalism and ac conductivity as a function of frequency and temperature. The ac conductivity follows a power law with frequency. The variation of frequency exponent with temperature suggests that the correlated barrier hopping is the dominant charge transport mechanism. The existence of both polaron and bipolaron in the transport mechanism has been confirmed from the binding energy calculations.