Carolina Chaves Prado and David M. Sarno. Queensborough Community College - CUNY, Bayside, NY
For decades, the conducting polymer polyaniline was known as a material with an irregular granular morphology. In recent years, methods such as electrospinning and templating on micelles have been used to impose a regular nanoscale structure on the polymer. Most notably, a simple modification of the �conventional synthesis� based on rapidly mixing the reagents has proven to be an extremely effective way of producing high yields of uniform nanofibers. We have extended this technique to mono and di-substituted analogs of aniline to examine the influence of variations in molecular structure on the nanoscale morphology of the resulting material. Scanning electron microscopy has revealed both discrete and interconnected nanofibers; nano/microspheres; and highly porous materials.