Doping of Polyaniline by Corona Discharge

It is well known that conductive polyaniline (PANI) films are usually doped by immersing dedoped PANI films in HCI solution. This paper shows that a corona discharge can be successfully employed to dope thin films of polyaniline coated on poly (ethylene terephthalate) films. Similarly to the conventional doping with aqueous HCl the process is accompanied by a color change from blue to green and the conductivity can be tuned in the range from 10−10 up to 0.3 Scm−1. Such new doping method presents several advantages over the conventional one namely, dry process, use of no chemicals, rapidity and no dopant migration. Measurements also showed that the conductivity persists for a long time as observed for films prepared in chemical solution doping. It is believed that this novel technique could be employed in a continuous doping process aiming to produce films with large area for anti electrostatic packing applications.