Carrier mobility of single-walled carbon nanotube-reinforced polyaniline nanofibers

The simple synthesis of one-dimensional (1D) semiconducting nanostructures with high charge-carrier transport is an important aim for the fabrication of organic electronic devices. Here, we report an initiator-assisted chemical processing technique that creates 1D nanocomposites consisting of a nanofibrillar polyaniline (PANi) shell built around a core of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). These nanostructured composites are produced by in situ polymerization of aniline in the presence of SWCNTs. The homogeneously dispersed SWCNTs in the nanofibrillar PANi matrix provides relatively high conductivities (up to 95 S cm-1) at low loadings (=5 wt %). The partially ordered arrangement of the semiconducting nanostructures is improved through self-assembly of the 1D nanocomposites at microelectrodes using a dielectrophoretic technique. Field effect devices fabricated from the nanocomposites demonstrate four times larger carrier mobilities than that of pure PANi nanofibers, with values up to 2.85 cm2 V-1 s-1 due to the strong confinement of free carriers by the fibers in the axial direction and a facile charge-transfer reaction between the two components. © 2011 American Chemical Society.