Glow discharge plasma polymerized nanostructured polyaniline thin film optical waveguide

¹Department of USIC, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India

²Department of Physics, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

³Surface Engineering Division, CSIR- National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore, India

⁴Department of Physics, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India

Adv. Mater. Lett., 2017, 8 (2), pp 180-184

DOI: 10.5185/amlett.2017.6409

Publication Date (Web): Dec 27, 2016

Copyright © IAAM-VBRI Press

E-mail: jbyadavphy@gmail.com

Abstract

In this work, glow discharge continuous wave plasma polymerization technique was used to deposit nanostructured polyaniline (PANI) thin film by varying input power. The radio frequency (RF) used for plasma polymerization was 13.56 MHz and working pressure was 0.15 mbar. It was found that, changes in the input power can be used to control the properties of the plasma polymerized PANI thin films. Highly cross-linked structure with an increase in chain length was observed from FTIR spectra with input RF power, whereas the film surface morphology was found to be highly uniform, densely packed and smooth from FE-SEM images. The surface roughness of the film was found to increase with RF power. The refractive index and adhesion of the film was found to be increased while the optical band gap and surface energy decreased with input RF power. The plasma polymerized PANI film showed outstanding optical transmission loss properties and proved itself as excellent optical waveguide. 

Keywords

Polyaniline, plasma polymerization, optical waveguide.