ABSTRACT
Spiny polyaniline (PANI) spheres (urchin-like) were coated on a poly(tetrafluoroethylene) (PTFE) membrane via a counter-diffuse interfacial oxidation polymerization of aniline in an aqueous medium. The produced composite membrane has both unexpected superhydrophilicity and conductivity. The microstructure and morphology of the composite membrane were characterized by FTIR, UV-vis, XRD, TGA, and SEM. Effects of reagent concentrations and polymerization time on the membrane morphology and properties were studied systematically. A possible formation mechanism of the urchin-like polyaniline nanospheres on PTFE surface has been briefly discussed. The co-effect of both spherical micelles formed by Nafion and nanofibrous micelles formed by aniline/p-toluenesulfonic acid was considered to be a reason to produce the urchin-like PANI nanospheres. The PTFE/Nafion/PANI composite membrane showed a convertible hydrophilic/hydrophobic feature via adjusting acidity/alkalinity of an aqueous medium and also was able to adsorb heavy metal-ions from the medium.
ABSTRACT
Polymeric core-shell microstructures have been constructed through a new method, namely sequential precipitation, which is intrinsically a self-assembly and phase separation process. High-quality poly(vinyldene fluoride)-polycarbonate-lithium perchlorate composite films with spherical core-shell microstructures have been prepared and determined to consist of conducting cores and insulating shells. Because of the percolation effect, the resulting materials present a dielectric constant as high as 10(4) -10(7) at the threshold.
ABSTRACT
We describe a simple and versatile method to fabricate conducting polymer hydrogels via supramolecular self-assembly between polymers and multivalent cations; the as-prepared hydrogels are potentially applicable in the fields of electrosensors, chemical release and artificial muscles.