Synthesis of nanoporous conducting polyaniline using ternary surfactant

Abstract A ternary surfactant (a mixture of cationic, anionic and nonionic surfactants) was used as a soft template for the first time in the synthesis of nanoporous polyaniline. The influence of synthesis parameters such as the polymerization time, temperature, the nature of acids, oxidizing agents and reaction conditions on the properties of porous polyaniline (PANI) was investigated. The synthesized PANI was characterized by SEM, TEM, FT-IR and X-ray diffraction analysis. Nanoporous PANI bundles of typical size around 100 nm, showing reasonable conductivity (10 − 2  S/cm) were obtained in 4 h at a temperature around 0–5 °C with a good yield (84 wt.% with respect to aniline used).