Micro/nano conductive-dielectric channels designed by poly(ethylene glycol) single crystals covered by polyaniline nanofibers

Abstract Dielectric-conductive single crystal channel-wire structures were developed using diblock and triblock copolymers of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and polyaniline (PANI). Conductive PANI nanofiber-covered nano/micro wires were designed between the dielectric homo-PEG channels via controlling the effective parameters, including the molecular weight of substrate building blocks, mixing with dielectric PEG chains, and arranging different channels in the vicinity of each other. Due to being synthesized by interfacial polymerization, conductive PANI nanobrushes had a diameter distribution on the PEG substrate. The conductivities of PANI nanofibers synthesized by stronger, potassium hydrogen biiodate (PHD), and weaker, ammonium peroxydisulfate (APS), oxidants varied in 70–80 and 0.005–0.01 S/cm, respectively. Furthermore, the electrical conductivities of the diblock and triblock copolymers prepared by PHD and APS ranged in 3–5 S/cm and 8 × 10 −5 −1 × 10 −4  S/cm, respectively. The mats of grown single crystals to some extent were as electroactive as bulk block copolymers. This was proved through the cyclic voltammetry (CV). The widths and thicknesses of dielectric channels and conductive wires were detected by the atomic force microscopy and the interface distribution function of small angle X-ray scattering. The lateral sizes of nanowires were 13–16 nm, those of microwires were 0.45–3.25 μm, however. The overall thicknesses of the channel-wire single crystals changed from 10 to 294 nm.