SOLUBILIZATION OF POLYANILINE IN WATER BY INTERPOLYMER COMPLEXATION

Water solubility of electro-active polymers in their doped state may p rovide a possibility for environmentally feasible manufacturing proces ses. Because previous results in this direction require expensive modi fications or impractical template polymerization methods, we created a simple method of mixing components with a large molecular weight diff erence. The polymer which acts as an acidic dopant and provides water solubility, has to have the higher molecular weight. The formed comple x resembles a block copolymer but in this case the polyaniline block i s attached to the sulfonated polystyrene chain by strong physical inte ractions instead of chemical end-to-end linkage.