Preparation of Conducting Oriented Polymer Films by Homoepitaxial Polymerization

Abstract

Oriented thin films were fabricated on substrates from a conducting polymer, poly(p-phenylene) (PPP), by the friction transfer method. When these films were immersed into a benzene polymerization reaction solution, newly polymerized molecules were deposited on the friction-transferred films as orienting templates. We call this process “homoepitaxial polymerization”. We investigated the dependence of thickness and orientation degree of the polymerized films on various reaction conditions, such as catalyst concentration, monomer concentration, reaction time and reaction temperature. The mechanism of oriented growth of the PPP films is discussed. Moreover, homoepitaxial polymerization of polyaniline (PANI) was examined with friction-transferred PANI as a template, for which an acceleration of the polymerization on the surfaces of the friction-transferred films was observed. We call this “surface-enhanced polymerization”. These processes are useful for the formation of patterned conducting polymers films.