Preparation and characterization of conducting polymer/silver hexacyanoferrate nanocomposite

In this work, we present an alternative route to prepare silver hexacyanoferrate(II)/polyaniline (PANI) composite thin films. Differently from the electrochemical method, used to synthesize the conducting polymer film on a electrode surface, this new chemical route makes use of dialysis membrane as a solid support to synthesize the silver hexacyanoferrate(III) compound, and subsequently uses this composite membrane as oxidizing agent to polymerize the aniline monomer. The spectroscopic (UV–vis and IR region) and electrochemical characterization (cyclic voltammetry) indicates that the polymeric composite remains optically active and conductive. The X-ray analysis shows that the composite membrane/Ag3[FeIII(CN)6] has an crystalline structure that can be assigned to the Ag3[FeIII(CN)6] structure, and after reaction with aniline solution it became less crystalline. Additionally the SEM measurements shown that the reaction of silver ions with hexacyanoferrate(III) across the membrane results in a well defined and aliened Ag3[FeIII(CN)6] crystals and when this crystalline compound reacts with aniline monomer silver wire of 100 nm of diameter by 6 μm longer are formed together with the conducting polymer polyaniline/Agx[FeII(CN)6] composite.