Intra-grain conduction of self-doped polyaniline

The conduction behavior of ultrathin films (about 10nm thick) composed of self-doped water-soluble polyaniline sulfonate (SPAN) was investigated using nano-gap electrodes under vacuum conditions. The conductance was found to be ohmic even in the high field regime up to 10(5) V cm(-1) over a temperature range of 10-300K. The temperature dependence of the conductance indicated that SPAN gave the extremely high value of localization length (L) = 300 nm without secondary doping, in comparison with conventional polyaniline. We propose that SPAN forms long-range highly crystalline metallic grains, and we observed intra-grain conduction due to some grains directly bridging the two nano-gap electrodes at low temperature. We conclude that inter-grain conduction becomes dominant as the temperature increases. Published by AIP Publishing.