A facile route to ultra-long polyaniline nanowires and the fabrication of photoswitch

Ultra-long polyaniline nanowires with an average diameter of 60 nm and length up to tens of micrometers were successfully synthesized via chemical oxidation polymerization in an aqueous solution. These nanowires exhibited reversible electrochemical behavior judged from cyclic voltammetry curves. The excellent photosensitivity and photoresponse of a bundle of nanowires were also investigated, which showed that the photocurrent enhanced by ca. 4 times under irradiation of an incandescence lamp (12 V, 10 W). This work might be useful in the fabrication of photosensor and photoswitch nanodevices in the future.

Graphical abstractUltra-long PANI nanowires were synthesized via a facile synthesis, which showed high photosensitivity and photoresponse according to switching the light source on/off.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide