FABRICATION OF 2D AND 3D CONDUCTING POLYMERS AND THEIR NANOCOMPOSITES
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Date
2024-08-28
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Nazarbayev University School of Engineering and Digital Sciences
Abstract
The Industrial Revolution and the rapid development of advanced materials manufacturing plastic
and polymers made the materials of the 21st century. Modern research societies are interested in
natural and synthetic polymers due to their adaptability to our daily needs, chemical, mechanical,
and optical properties, good processability, and relatively economically efficient production.
The main advantage of polymers over metals and ceramics is their unique and flexible
composition, which can be shaped into advanced and more complicated structures. Other
advantages include the weight difference, less energy consumption during processing, corrosion
resistance, the ability to blend with other polymers easily, and most importantly, the possibility of
application in smart materials by constantly replacing the metals with conductive polymers. Before
the discovery of conductive polymers, the previous conventional application of polymers was
mainly non-electronic due to their inherent insulating properties and mechanical stiffness.
Conducting polymers (CPs) attracts researchers due to their ability to combine the electrical
properties of metals with the original mechanical and physicochemical properties of traditional
polymers.
The applicability of conducting polymers is influenced by their processing characteristics, doping
level, redox properties, polymer structure, and whether charge transport is purely electronic or
mixed ionic and electronic.
The size and structure of the conducting polymers (CPs) can vary from atomic configuration to
microarchitecture. Nanomaterials can be made up of single atoms, atomic clusters, nanowires,
atomically thin layers, hierarchical designs, and two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D)
macrostructures. These diverse forms are crucial for structural design in all aspects. New
techniques were created to make 2D and 3D intrinsic structures of different nanomaterials that can
be changed to fit different designs through self-assembly or heterostructure synthesis. Depending
on the desired application, these techniques can adjust 2D or 3D nanomaterials for better device
performance. Phase control, defect formation, doping, and innovative concepts based on the
unique structural properties of 2D, and 3D nanomaterials hold significant potential but remain
largely unexplored. Conventional methods for fabricating two-dimensional and three-dimensional
conducting polymers require many additional endeavors, such as combining several techniques,
selecting specific templates, and using highly costly equipment. In this thesis, we introduced a
universal strategic synthetic approach that can easily fabricate various morphological structures of
conducting polymers in a one-step step, including nanopowders, nanorods, 2D nanosheets, and 3D
bulk materials. Moreover, bicontinuous microemulsion (BME) is a unique interlayered platform
that fabricates a continuously porous conducting polymer network. The synthesized materials
exhibit an essential increase in performance over traditional template-assisted polymers due to
open-cell porosity, which allows better charge transport and adsorption-desorption through the
polymer matrix. During this study, four different composite materials were synthesized with
polypyrrole using BME and explored their potential applications, such as sensors for heavy metal
ions detection, antibacterial coating and working electrode for BES, flexible micro-supercapacitor,
flexible ultra-sensitive hydrogen gas sensors working at room temperature.
The great performance demonstrated by fabricated devices proved that the developed platform can
be used to synthesize unique multifunctional materials with tailoring properties.
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Keywords
conducting polymers, TECHNOLOGY::Materials science::Functional materials, Type of access: Embargo
Citation
Zhigerbayeva, G. (2024). Fabrication of 2D and 3D Conducting Polymers and Their Nanocomposites. Nazarbayev University School of Engineering and Digital Sciences