Fabrication of zirconyl chloride doped polyvinyl alcohol /polythiophene (PVA-Zr-PTh) nanocomposite thin films by chemical polymerization method

Abstract

Zirconyl chloride doped polyvinyl alcohol / polythiophene (PVA-Zr-PTh) nanocomposite thin films by chemical polymerization method.Zirconyl chloride ZrOCl2.8H2O was used at different concentrations as doping (0, 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.6, 0.7 and 0.8g).The produced films were characterized by Xray diffraction (XRD), UV-Visible spectroscopy, Infrared spectroscopy (IR), scanning electron microscope (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), d.c electrical conductivity and dielectric constant measurements.The optical properties of all investigated films were studied, where the optical absorption of the prepared films decreases with increasing the amount of ZrOCl2.8H2O in both VIS (500-700 nm) and UV (200-400 nm) regions.It is clear from the XRD patterns of the PVA-Zr-PTh samples that the intensity of the diffraction peaks increases with the increase in zirconylchloride concentration due to the semicrystalline nature of the resulting Zr(IV) doped PVA/PTh compositions.These results are also in good agreement with the morphological changes observed in the PVA-Zr-PTh samples, as per the SEM and TEM analysis, The increase in conductivity with increase in Zr(IV) concentration up to 0.8g of ZrOCl2.8H2O has been observed in PVA-Zr-PPy composites and the dielectric constant tends to increase with the increment in frequency as well as with enhancement in Zr(IV) composition.