Electronic and structural characterization of electrochemically synthesized conducting polyaniline from XPS studies

We report high‐resolution XPS data on three forms of the electrochemically synthesized polyaniline films: the highly conducting emeraldine salt form and the films obtained after KOH treatment and electrochemical reduction in HCI. The deconvoluted N 1s peaks in these films show clear evidence of the existence of the existence of four states of nitrogen, which are attributed to the amine, polaron and localized bipolaron defect configurations. The trends observed after the KOH treatment and electrochemical reduction in HCI in the N 1s spectra, plus the C 1s and O 1s peak shapes, support this assignment scheme.