Investigation of ageing effects on the electrical properties of polyaniline/silver nanocomposites

Polyaniline(PANI)/Ag nanocomposites, synthesized by incorporation of separately prepared silver nanoparticles in 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone(NMP) solution of PANI, have been aged at the accelerated temperature of 120 oC to simulate a storage period of 2 years at 25 oC. The accelerated ageing of these materials is done by using the activation energy calculated from data collected using heat flow calorimetry (HFC). The impedance spectroscopic studies of NMP plasticized aged nanocomposite films suggest a microphase separation into reduced and oxidized repeat units. There is crosslinking of the PANI films during ageing thereby obstructing the charge transfer between PANI chains and silver nanoparticles. As a result, the resistivity is increased.