Thermal aging of undoped polyaniline: Effect of chemical degradation on electrical properties

Abstract

Abstract Aging experiments, with a special emphasis on the atmosphere effect, have been carried out on undoped polyaniline, in its half‐oxidized state, namely emeraldine base (EB). The polymer has been aged under vacuum and in air atmosphere. The chemical degradation has been analyzed by several complementary techniques such as viscosity measurements, FTIR, XPS, and UV‐Vis‐nIR spectroscopy. We show that emeraldine base exhibits two different degradation mechanisms. The first one is intrinsic to the polymer and occurs independently on aging conditions (vacuum or air). It consists of crosslinking via tertiary amine groups created from imine nitrogen via double‐bond breaking. The second mechanism is extrinsic and occurs concomitantly with the first one upon aging in air. It consists of oxygen incorporation in a form of carbonyl groups and chain scission. Both degradation pathways result in a decrease of the electrical conductivity of the polymer due to the lowering of the average conjugation length. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 86: 395–404, 2002