Thermal transition of electrochemically synthesized polyaniline

The thermal stability of polyaniline (PAni) is of great importance in commercial applications. PAni and its emeraldine base form (PAni-EB) were electrochemically synthesized and subjected to thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) in inert atmosphere, which illustrated that the dopant HClO4 could act as the oxidizing agent at elevated temperature and caused serious decomposition of PAni. Combined with differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), in-situ X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analyses, the crosslinking reaction among PAni-EB molecules at about 250 °C was characterized, and the kinetic parameters were calculated by applying different heating rates in the DSC measurement.