Investigation on structural and electrical properties of FeCl3 doped polythiophene (PT) blended with micro and nano copper particles by mechanical mixing

Conducting polythiophene (PT) was blended with micro copper (mu- Cu) and nano copper doped polythiophene (n-Cu) by mechanical mixing. The pure conducting polymer and its micro/nano composite materials were characterized by spectroscopic, crystallographic studies by FT-IR, FT-Raman and XRD. The morphological and elemental composition was analyzed using SEM-EDX. The particle size of n-CuPT was confirmed by TEM studies. The electrical conducting properties of the pure PT and its composites were studied by two probes technique. The room temperature electrical conductivities of PT,mu-CuPT and n-CuPT were calculated and found to be 7.2 x 10(-4) S/cm,2.8 x 10(-3) S/cm and 1.0 x 10(-2) S/cm. The result revealed that there is an increase of one order of conductivity in the micro composite and two order of increase of conductivity in the nano composite when compared to pristine PT. (C) 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.