Polyaniline-metal oxide-nano-composite as a nano-electronics, opto-electronics, heat resistance and anticorrosive material

Nanoparticles when combined with conducting polymer polyaniline leads to increase in advanced functional properties. Cu, Ni and Zn metal oxide (CNZMO) nanoparticles were synthesizes by sol-gel technique. Conducting polymer polyaniline was synthesized by low temperature chemical synthesis method. In situ technique was used to synthesize CNZMO-Polyaniline (PANI) nanocomposite. Metal nanoparticles, polyaniline and metal oxide-polyaniline nano-composite were characterized by UV–visible, FTIR, FESEM, XRD and TGA/DTA techniques. Opto-electronic, thermal and anticorrosive properties of CNZMO-PANI nano-composite was compared with their bulk counterpart. The optical band gap of the PANI-nano-composite was found to be 1.72 eV which is lesser than pure polyaniline (3.2 eV) and bulk counterpart (2.2 to 3.6 eV). Anticorrosive property of CNZMO-PANI nano-composite was tested for mild steel in 0.1 N hydrochloric acid medium and was found to be good corrosion inhibitor at 80 ppm concentration. CNZMO-PANI nanocomposite was found to be thermally stable up to 650 °C. Hence, synthesized CNZMO-PANI nano-composite has large number of applications in the field of nano-electronics, heat resistance composite material, optoelectronics and as anticorrosive material.