from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
During the last decade, interest in conducting polymer/clay nanocomposites increased, mostly due to their very good physical, chemical, and mechanical properties, which can be significantly enhanced in various ways compared to pristine polymers. One of the most studied conducting polymers is polyaniline (PANI) which has unique electrical and optical properties, and, in addition, its interaction with clay structure leads to improvement of resulting electrical conductivity. In this study, the clay mineral montmorillonite (MMT) was used. Raman spectroscopy is nondestructive technique and coupled with an optical microscope has a potential to determine the chemical composition and possible inhomogeneity of the sample. Moreover, Raman spectroscopy is very sensitive to changes in the structure of polymers in terms of its protonation state. Aim of the study was the characterization of PANI/MMT nanocomposites prepared in three different forms (powders, layers, and tablets) by Raman microspectroscopy. In addition, after calcination of the prepared samples at 1300 °C, the transformation of PANI to the few-layer graphene was observed. Above that, Raman microspectroscopy was used to creation of the Raman spectral maps which reveal the distribution of the formed few-layer graphene.
Keywords: Raman microspectroscopy, polyaniline, montmorillonite, graphene, calcination© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.