Synthesis and Characterization of Ti Decorated Polyaniline

Abstract

Ti decorated Polyaniline(PANI) using TiH₂/HCl solution and PANI (emeraldine base, Mw ca. 20,000, Aldrich) were synthesized in this study. The ionized Ti was reacted with dissolved PANI in NMP at high temperature. Other research groups have been studied hydrogen storage materials using conducting polymers which were treated at strong acidic conditions. Among the whole conducting polymers, PANI has been extensively studied because of its simply synthesis, environmental stability, relatively high conductivity and easily doping with protonic acids. This study proved that Ti decorated PANI has capabilities of H₂ uptake as hydrogen storage materials using Kubas-interaction. It was presented that H₂ adsorbed to the samples up to about 0.1 wt.% at room temperature. Furthermore, results from UV/vis and FT-IR spectra of the composite material help understanding the mechanisms of interaction between Ti and PANI. The ratio of Ti elements in these samples were investigated by Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM) EDS, ICP-Atomic Emission Spectrometer (ICP-AES), and Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE).