Conducting Polymer Films Fabricated by Oxidative Graft Copolymerization of Aniline on Poly(acrylic acid) Grafted Poly(ethylene terephthalate) Surfaces

A conductive polyaniline/poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PANI/PET) composite film was fabricated via the oxidative graft copolymerization of aniline (ANI) onto the plasma-induced poly(acrylic acid) (PAAc) grafted PET surface. The attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy spectra (ATR-FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results confirmed that PANI was successfully grafted onto the surface of the PAAc-g-PET films. The effects of the experimental conditions on the percentage of PANI grafted onto the PAAc-g-PET films were extensively investigated. A very high grafting percentage of ANI can be obtained through the acid-base reaction between the aniline monomer and PAAc on the PAAc-g-PET surface at high temperature. As a result, the grafting percentage of PANI can be increased to as high as 12.18 wt %, which causes the surface resistance of the PANT-g-PAAc-g-PET film to be reduced to about 1000 Omega/sq. We predicted that this is because of the high flexibility of the PAAc molecular chains and high solubility of aniline, both of which facilitate the binding of aniline to PAAc during this high temperature acid-base reaction. It was observed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) that the PANI-modified PET surface exhibits higher size irregularity and surface roughness, which further indicated that a much greater number of aniline molecules can be reactively bonded to and distributed along the grafted AAc chains and that the PANI-g-PAAc-g-PET surface resulting from the sequential oxidative graft copolymerization can possess higher electrical conductivity.