Polyaniline effect on the conductivity of the PMMA/Ag hybrid composite

The electroless coating of Ag on PMMA sphere pre-coated with polyaniline (PANI) was investigated. Pre-coating was carried out using in situ chemical polymerization. The extent of silver coating on PMMA and PMMA/PANI particles was studied by measuring the remaining content of Ag using TGA, in terms of the number of pretreatment steps, PANI content, AgNO3 concentration and the particle size. The results indicated that the deposition of PANI on the PMMA surface induced high efficiency of the silver plating due to the activation effect. The resistivity of PMMA/Ag and PMMA/PANI/Ag composites varied between 1014 and 10−1 Ω cm and between 108 and 10−4 Ω cm, respectively. Such increase in resistivity, along with the relatively compact and continuous silver layer on PMMA/PANI/Ag composite particles showed that this method is effectively applicable on the development of conductive materials.