Preparation of TiO2/polyaniline nanocomposite from a lyotropic liquid crystalline solution

Nanocomposites with two-dimensional (2D) lamellar polyaniline (PANI) as the matrix and TiO2 as the disperse phase have been prepared in a single step from discotic nematic lyotropic liquid crystal (LLC) solutions as composed by sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). Our experiment suggests that, upon loading inorganic species, the crystallinity along the perpendicular direction of PANI chains is improved; the overall morphology is nearly unchanged except the distribution of the interlamellar distances becomes much wider. Finally the thermogravimetric measurement suggests that approximately as high as 36.3% (weight%) of TiO2 can be introduced into the polymer matrix.