High electrical and electrochemical properties in bacterial cellulose/polypyrrole membranes

Abstract The purpose of the current work was to produce conducting electroactive membranes from bacterial cellulose (BC) coated with polypyrrole (PPy) via in situ chemical polymerization of pyrrole at 4 °C using FeCl 3 as oxidant agent. The electrical conductivity, tensile, thermal and electrochemical properties of BC-PPy membranes were investigated. The results revealed that the uniformly coating of PPy nanoparticles on the surface of BC template achieved high electrical conductivity of 3.39 S cm −1 and a specific capacitance of 191.94 F g −1 at 5 mv s −1 scan rate. The high conductivity and specific capacitance of the present BC-PPy membranes opens new potential applications for BC in various fields as biosensors, flexible electronics, or energy storage devices.