Doping level dependent space charge limited conduction in polyaniline nanoparticles

Spherical shaped polyaniline nanoparticles of average diameter ∼4 nm were doped with different concentration of hydrochloric acid. The x-ray diffraction studies reveal an increase in crystallinity with doping. Temperature dependent current-voltage measurements on the different nanoparticle samples indicate the prevalence of bulk-controlled space charge limited conduction (SCLC) mechanism in the high voltage (>1 V) region while the ohmic conduction dominates at the lower voltage (<1 V) region. With increasing doping the nature of SCLC changes from trap-free SCLC to Child-Langmuir type SCLC via exponential trap-limited SCLC. Moreover, the field and temperature dependence of mobility exhibits the universal Poole-Frenkel behavior. The energetic disorder parameter, spatial disorder parameter, inter-site distance, and localization length have been extracted employing the uncorrelated and the correlated Gaussian disorder model.