New renewable resource amphiphilic molecular design for size-controlled and highly ordered polyaniline nanofibers

We demonstrate here, for the first time, a unique strategy for conducting polyaniline nanofibers based on renewable resources. Naturally available cardanol, which is an industrial waste and main pollutant from the cashew nut industry, is utilized for producing well-defined polyaniline nanofibers. A new amphiphilic molecule is designed and developed from cardanol, which forms a stable emulsion with aniline for a wide composition range in water (1:1 to 1:100 dopant/aniline mole ratio) to produce polyaniline nanofibers. The scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy analysis of the nanofibers reveals that the dopant/aniline ratio plays a major role in determining the shape and size of polyaniline nanofibers. The nanofiber length increases with the increase in the dopant/aniline ratio, and perfectly linear, well-defined nanofibers of lengths as long as 7-8 mu M were produced. The amphiphilic dopant has a built-in head-to-tail geometry and effectively penetrates into the polyaniline chains to form highly organized nanofibers. Wide-angle X-ray diffraction (WXRD) spectra of the nanofibers showed a new peak at 2 theta = 6.3 (d spacing = 13.9 angstrom) corresponding to the three-dimensional solid-state ordering of polyaniline-dopant chains, and this peak intensity increases with increase in the nanofiber length. The comparison of morphology and WXRD reveals that high ordering in polyaniline chains results in the formation of long, well-defined nanofibers, and this direct correlation for the polyaniline nanofibers with solid-state ordering has been established. The conductivity of the polyaniline nanofibers also increases with increase in the solid-state ordering rather than increasing with the extent of doping. The polyaniline nanofibers are freely soluble in water and possess high environmental and thermal stability up to 300 degrees C for various applications.