The straight and orderly microrods of polypyrrole(PPy) was synthesized in a microemulsion system consisted of cetyltrimethylammonium bromide(CTAB), n-pentanol, water and pyrrole by chemical oxidative polymerization, in which CTAB was used as soft templates and APS was used as the oxidant. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to characterize the structure of the PPy microrods. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) was used to characterize the morphology of the samples. We discussed the impact of temperature, the adding way of the oxidant, the amount of cosurfactant n-pentanol to the morphology of PPy microrods. The results showed that straight and orderly PPy microrods with a diameter about 300nm and a length up to 20μm were synthesized when the temperature was kept at room temperature (25°C), the dropping time of APS was more than 1.5h, the ratio of CTAB to n-pentanol was 0.6:1, and the polymerization time was about 24h. We studied the growth process of PPy microrods by HTEM analysis. HTEM images revealed that the growth process of PPy changed from hollow microrods, semi-hollow microrods, and finally solid microrods.
The Impact of Aberration-Corrected Transmission Electron Microscopy on Catalysis Investigations
