Iodine doped, semi-conducting nylon 6 polymers

Abstract

An attempt has been made to develop intrinsically conducting nylon 6 films by iodine doping and investigate the doped material in terms of electrical, structural and optical characteristics. The electrical conduction increases with increasing iodine content as iodine forms charge transfer complexes with the polymer matrix and conductivity of the order of 10−3 Scm−1 is obtained with films that contained 200 wt% iodine. The extent of crystallinity reduced from 53% for pristine nylon 6 films to 47% for iodine doped nylon 6 films (200 wt% iodine). The band gap reduced from 5 eV to 2.40 eV for iodine doped nylon 6 films (200 wt% iodine). The melting point of the matrix polymer reduced from 220°C to approximately 200°C for iodine doped nylon 6 films (200 wt% iodine).