a) b - École Polytechnique de Montréal

Woo Jin, Won Ho, & Yun Heum, 2003), cellulose acetate(Niziol & Laska, 1999; Planes et al.,
1998; Pron, Zagorska, Nicolau, Genoud, & Nechtschein, 1997; Wolter, Banka, Genoud, Pron, &
Nechtschein, 1997), polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)(Angappane, Rajeev Kini, Natarajan,
Rangarajan, & Wessling, 2002; Morgan, Foot, & Brooks, 2001), polyethylene (PE),
polypropylene (PP), polyamide (PA)(Domenech, Bortoluzzi, Soldi, & Franco, 2002; Jing, Yang,
Zheng, & Lan, 1999; Qinghua, Xianhong, Yanhou, Dajun, & Xiabin, 2002; Zhang, Jin, Wang, &
Jing, 2001), polyimide (PI)(Liangcai et al., 2001; Moon Gyu & Seung Soon, 2001; Su et al.,
1997; Watcharaphalakorn, Ruangchuay, Chotpattananont, Sirivat, & Schwank, 2005), polyvinyl
chloride (PVC)(Chipara et al., 1998; Laska, Zak, & Pron, 1997), polyurethane (PU)(Rodrigues &
Akcelrud, 2003; Rodrigues, Lisboa-Filho, Mangrich, & Akcelrud, 2005; Yoshikawa, Hino, &
Kuramoto, 2006), and a wide variety of thermoplastic elastomers(Dong-Uk, Kitae, Young Chul,
Yun Heum, & Jun Young, 2001; Goh, Chan, & Ong, 1998; Ong, Goh, & Chan, 1997) were used,
among others. Conductive polymer blends with good mechanical properties and conductivity
varying between 10 −11 and 300 S/cm have been easily fabricated. There are some other reasons
for blending PANI with general polymers, such as to increase the stability of conduction. It has
been observed that for polymer blends containing PANI, a range of conductivity between 10 -10 to
10 -1 S/cm (melt processing) and 10 S/cm (solution processing) can be achieved(Panipol, 2000).
Different techniques, including melt-blending, solution blending, in-situ polymerization, and
dispersion mixing have been used to prepare binary and ternary PANI/polymer (A)/polymer (B).
Each technique has some advantages and some disadvantages. For example, in PS/PANI meltblend,
the percolation threshold of PANI is much higher than that in a PS/PANI blend prepared
by dispersion mixing, although it is clear that a binary blend composed of PANI and PS prepared
by melt-blending has better mechanical properties than a PS/PANI blend made by dispersion
mixing(Segal, et al., 2001). Moreover, Woo et al.(Woo Jin, et al., 2003) reported that PS/PANI
blends prepared by an in-situ polymerization technique have a higher conductivity than by the
other techniques, such as solution blending. A conductivity value of 0.1 S/cm for 20 wt% of
PANI is observed for a PS/PANI blend prepared by in-situ polymerization, due to a better
morphology compared with the other methods, such as solution blending. Zilberman et
al.(Zilberman, et al., 2000d) reported that for PS/PANI and LLDPE/PANI, the percolation
threshold is about 30 wt% PANI. For a binary blend composed of CoPA/PANI, a value of 20
wt% PANI is obtained. They also observed a high-quality conducting PANI network in a
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