a) b - École Polytechnique de Montréal

2.3.1.2.1 Polyaniline
One of the most technologically promising electrically conductive polymers is polyaniline, due
to its good environmental stability(Huang, D., & MacDiarmid, 1986), ease of synthesis, versatile
processability and stable conductivity in relation with other conductive polymers. Investigations
by Macdiarmid et al.(Macdiarmid et al., 1985) in the mid-1980’s resulted in the discovery of
electrical conductivity for the emeraldine salt of polyaniline, which led to an explosion of
interest in this fascinating polymer. Polyaniline is known to be crystalline, and a highly
conducting state is accomplished by simple protonation of the imine nitrogen atoms in the
emeraldine base backbone. Only one form of polyaniline, called the emeraldine salt, is
electrically conducting. The main disadvantage of all intrinsically conductive polymers,
including PANI, is its limited melt-processability. Addition of zinc compound to doped-PANI
made some complex allowed a method to tailor the processability of sulfonic acid-doped
PANI(Hartikainen et al., 2001; Ruokolainen et al., 2000). It has been observed that for polymer
blends containing PANI, a range of conductivity between 10 -10 S cm -1 to 10 -1 S cm -1 (melt
processing) and 10 -10 S cm -1 to 10 S cm -1 (solution processing) can be achieved(Panipol, 2000).
There are several dopants belonging to the sulfonic acid group for PANI, such as
dinonylnaphthalenedisulfonic acid (DNNDSA). Among the sulfonic acids, camphor-10-sulfonic
acid (CSA) is much used for this purpose due to high solubility of PANI-CSA in m-cresol(Vikki
et al., 1996). A soluble PANI-dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid (DBSA) dispersion was synthesized
by Kababya et al.,(Kababya, Appel, Haba, Titelman, & Schmidt, 1999) showing that DBSA is
molecularly miscible with PANI. PANI-DBSA dispersions have been recently used to prepare
blends with other commodity plastics(Haba, et al., 2000).
2.3.1.2.1.1 Binary PANI/Polymer or Ternary PANI/Polymer/Polymer Blends
Co-continuous polymer blends of PANI and a variety of classical polymers have been
extensively studied to improve mechanical properties of these materials and also to decrease the
percolation threshold of the conductive polymers. Polystyrene(PS)(Jousseaume, Morsli, &
Bonnet, 2002; Jousseaume, Morsli, Bonnet, Tesson, & Lefrant, 1998; Won-Jung et al., 2004;
59