Electrochemical Synthesis of Conducting Polypyrrole Film on Tin Substrate: Structural, Chemical and Field Emission Investigations

Abstract

Electrochemical synthesis of Polypyrrole (PPy) thin films on Sn substrates has been carried out under cyclic voltammetry (CV) mode. The structural, morphological and chemical properties of the as-synthesized PPy films were investigated using various characterization techniques like SEM, UV-Visible and FTIR. Furthermore, field emission (FE) behaviour of the PPy thin film emitter were carried out at base pressure of ~ 1×10-8 mbar and found to be interesting. The threshold field, required to draw emission current density of 1 μA/cm2, is observed to be 0.90 V/μm and very high emission current density of 12.87 mA/cm2 has been drawn at applied field of ~ 2.8 V/μm. The emission current stability investigated at preset values of 1, 10 and 100 μA/cm2 is observed to be fairly good over duration of more than three hours. The simplicity of the synthesis route coupled with the capability to deliver very high emission current density at relatively lower applied field make the PPy thin field emitter as a potential candidate for practical applications in field emission based devices