In Situ Polymerization and Characterization of PANI/CoFe2O4 Nanocomposites for Thermal, Magnetic, Electrical, and Electrochemical Properties

Composites of polyaniline and cobalt ferrite have been prepared using in-situ chemical polymerization to study their supercapactive behaviour with electrical, thermal, and magnetic properties in light of the progressing applications of conducting polymers. X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were used to confirm the synthesis of materials and to carry out their structural studies. Scanning electron microscope image clears the embeddedness of nanoparticles of cobalt ferrite in polyaniline matrix in such a way that surface area of the rod-shaped polyaniline gets enhanced. Thermogravimetric analysis has been employed for measuring decomposition temperature of samples. Optical band gap of polyaniline is found to reduce from 1.63 to 1.49 eV due to embedment of cobalt ferrite nanoparticles. Cole-Cole plots fitted with two sub circuits is showing grain boundary like structure of synthesized samples. Conducting attributes of PANI/Cobalt ferrite composites have been studied in detail w.r.t. frequency. Magnetic properties at +/- 10KOe established the magnetic attributes in composites due to inclusion of ferrite particles. The electrochemical studies done over scan rate from 2 to 10mV/s, of prepared materials for specific capacitance were found to be significantly high for composites as compare to pure conducting polyaniline or ferrites. This study promotesthe synthesized materials as new opportunities for the energy storage devices.