Synthesis and Characterization of Nanofibrous Polyaniline Thin Film Prepared by Novel Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Polymerization Technique

Choon-Sang Park; Dong Ha Kim; Bhum Jae Shin; Heung-Sik Tae

doi:10.3390/ma9010039

Synthesis and Characterization of Nanofibrous Polyaniline Thin Film Prepared by Novel Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Polymerization Technique

Materials (Basel). 2016 Jan 11;9(1):39. doi: 10.3390/ma9010039.

Authors

Choon-Sang Park¹, Dong Ha Kim², Bhum Jae Shin³, Heung-Sik Tae⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Electronics Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 702-701, Korea. purplepcs@ee.knu.ac.kr.
² School of Electronics Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 702-701, Korea. ao9o9@ee.knu.ac.kr.
³ Department of Electronics Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul 143-747, Korea. hahusbj@sejong.ac.kr.
⁴ School of Electronics Engineering, College of IT Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 702-701, Korea. hstae@ee.knu.ac.kr.

Abstract

This work presents a study on the preparation of plasma-polymerized aniline (pPANI) nanofibers and nanoparticles by an intense plasma cloud type atmospheric pressure plasma jets (iPC-APPJ) device with a single bundle of three glass tubes. The nano size polymer was obtained at a sinusoidal wave with a peak value of 8 kV and a frequency of 26 kHz under ambient air. Discharge currents, photo-sensor amplifier, and optical emission spectrometer (OES) techniques were used to analyze the plasma produced from the iPC-APPJ device. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and gel permeation chromatography (GPC) techniques were used to analyze the pPANI. FE-SEM and TEM results show that pPANI has nanofibers, nanoparticles morphology, and polycrystalline characteristics. The FT-IR and GC-MS analysis show the characteristic polyaniline peaks with evidence that some quinone and benzene rings are broken by the discharge energy. GPC results show that pPANI has high molecular weight (M_w), about 533 kDa with 1.9 polydispersity index (PDI). This study contributes to a better understanding on the novel growth process and synthesis of uniform polyaniline nanofibers and nanoparticles with high molecular weights using the simple atmospheric pressure plasma polymerization technique.

Keywords: atmospheric pressure plasma; intense plasma cloud type atmospheric pressure plasma jets (iPC-APPJ); nanofiber; nanoparticle; plasma-polymerized aniline (pPANI); polyaniline; polycrystalline; transmission electron microscopy (TEM).