Preparation and characterization of novel polypyrrole-nanotube/polyaniline free-standing composite films via facile solvent-evaporation method

Polyaniline (PANI) is an important conducting polymer and has drawn much attention for its inexpensiveness and chemical stability in the conducting state but its conductivity is rather low. Another well-known conducting polymer is polypyrrole (PPy) with a much higher electrical conductivity but it is hard to prepare films using PPy alone due to its poor film-forming ability. In this work, novel polypyrrole-nanotube (PPy-NT)/polyaniline (PANI) composite films are prepared via a facile solvent-evaporation method. The influence of the PPy-NT content is examined on the film structure, morphology, electrical and mechanical properties. It is shown that PPy nanotubes (PPy-NTs) are uniformly distributed in the PANI matrix. The electrical conductivity is greatly enhanced by 10.2 times by the addition of 10 wt.% PPy nanotubes. Moreover, the mechanical ductility is significantly increased by the addition of PPy nanotubes.