Anticorrosion and electromagnetic interference shielding performance of bifunctional PEDOT-graphene nanocomposites

In situ oxidative polymerization method was used to polymerize the 3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene (EDOT) in the presence of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) by varying the concentration of GNPs (1, 5, 10, and 15 wt%). Raman spectroscopy and XRD data suggest the successful formation of PEDOT-GNP nanocomposites and enhancement in the crystalline nature of the nanocomposites. The electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding performance of PEDOT-GNP nanocomposites was studied in the X-band (8 to 12 GHz) frequency range. EMI shielding effec-tiveness of around 17.6 dB was obtained for PEDOT-15 wt% GNP [PG15] nanocomposite. This shows that, PG15 nanocomposite can attenuate around 90 % of incident electromagnetic radiation with absorption mechanism being the major contribution. Further, anticorrosion property of PEDOT-GNP nanocomposites on Al metal in 4 M HCl solution was studied by atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), Tafel plots (or potentiodynamic polariza-tion), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques. PG15 nanocomposite exhibited superior anticorrosion performance, with a protection efficiency of about 98 %, compared to other studied nano -composites (about 94 % and 97 % for PEDOT-5 wt% GNP and PEDOT-10 wt% GNP nanocomposite, respectively) in a 4 M HCl environment. PG15 may be used as a coating material in situations where EMI shielding and anticorrosion are crucial.