3D porous polymeric conductive material prepared using LbL deposition

Abstract In this work a 3D porous polymeric conducting material is derived from a multi-percolated polymer blend system. The work has focused on the preparation of low surface area porous substrates from polymer blends followed by the deposition of polyaniline conductive polymer (PANI) on the internal porous surface using a layer-by-layer (LbL) technique. The approach reported here allows for the percolation threshold concentration of polyaniline conductive polymer (PANI) to be reduced to values of no more than 0.19%. Furthermore, depending on the amount of PANI deposited, the conductivity of the porous substrate can be controlled from 10 −15  S cm −1 to 10 −3  S cm −1 . Ternary and quaternary multi-percolated systems comprised of high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polystyrene (PS), poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) are prepared by melt mixing and subsequently annealed in order to obtain large interconnected phases. Selective extraction of PS, PMMA and PVDF result in a fully interconnected porous HDPE substrate of ultra-low surface area and highly uniform sized channels. This provides an ideal substrate for subsequent polyaniline (PANI) addition. Using a layer-by-layer (LbL) approach, alternating poly(styrene sulfonate) (PSS)/PANI layers are deposited on the internal surface of the 3-dimensional porous polymer substrate. The PANI and sodium poly(styrene sulfonate) (PSS) both adopt an inter-diffused network conformation on the surface. The sequential deposition of PSS and PANI has been studied in detail and the mass deposition profile demonstrates oscillatory behavior following a zigzag-type pattern. The presence of salt in the deposition solution results in a more uniform deposition and more thickly deposited PSS/PANI layers. The conductivity of these samples was measured and the conductivity can be controlled from 10 −15  S cm −1 to 10 −5  S cm −1 depending on the number of deposited layers. In the case of a porous sample which can be crushed, applying a load to the substrate can be used as an additional control parameter. In that sample a high load results in higher conductivity with values as high as 10 −3  S cm −1 obtained. The work described above has focused on very low surface area porous substrates in order to generate a conductive device with the lowest possible concentration values of polyaniline, but high surface area substrates can also be readily prepared using this approach.