Belt up for new nanomaterials

Simple method to prepare conducting polymer nanostructures.

Conducting polymer nanobelts can be prepared without the need for surfactants or templates according to a team of chemists from China.

Conducting polymers such as poly( o-phenylenediamine) (PPD) have been used in diverse applications but their preparation on a nano-scale can be problematic since they are often prepared using templates which then need to be removed from the final product. However, Erkang Wang and colleagues at the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry have developed a method for the preparation of PPD nanobelts that requires only the monomer, o-phenylenediamine (oPD), and an oxidant, HAuCl ₄. They speculate that the HAuCl ₄ is reduced to gold nanoparticles by the oPD while oPD oligomers are formed at the same time . The nanoparticles then catalyse the oxidative polymerisation of further oPD monomers by HAuCl ₄ to give PPD nanobelts. The nanobelts were characterised by various methods to show that they are uniform PPD structures, several hundred micrometres long and several hundred nanometres wide.

’These nanobelts with long conjugated length may hold great promise as building blocks of semiconductor devices’ comments Wang, adding that the ’convenient method for the rapid synthesis of 1D poly( o-phenylenediamine) nanostructures.in a single process.will allow many researchers to explore fascinating properties and applications associated with these novel nanobelts.’

Caroline Evans