Tuning the Conductivity of Polyaniline through Doping by Means of Single Precursor Vapor Phase Infiltration

This work describes a novel single precursor vapor phase infiltration (VPI) process to dope polyaniline (PANI). The infiltration is performed with the metal containing atomic layer deposition precursors MoCl₅ or SnCl₄. The conductivities are assessed with four-point probe measurements and show significant enhancements by up to 6 orders of magnitude, confirming the efficiency of the VPI process. Furthermore, it is found that the conductivities of PANI/MoCl₅ and PANI/SnCl₄ outperform the conductivity of HCl-doped PANI if exposed to elevated temperatures (150 °C) in vacuum. The chemical changes resulting from the infiltration of PANI are characterized applying FTIR and Raman spectroscopy. Scanning electron microscopy images show that the morphologies of the samples do not alter after the infiltration process.