Influence of Pulp Fiber Substrate on Conductivity of Polyaniline-coated Conductive Paper Prepared by In-situ Polymerization

The influences of pulp type, content of acidic groups (i.e., sulfonic and carboxylic groups) in CTMP, kappa number (i.e., residual lignin content) of unbleached kraft pulp, and beating degree of bleached kraft pulp on the conductivity of polyaniline (PAn)-coated conductive paper were investigated. The amounts of PAn coated on chemical pulps were higher than those coated on high yield pulps, and the surface resistivities of conductive papers prepared from chemical pulps were lower than those prepared from high yield pulps. As the substrates for the production of PAn-coated conductive paper, bleached chemical pulps were better than unbleached chemical pulps. The conductivity had a significant positive linear correlation with the amount of PAn coated. The amount of PAn coated increased with increasing content of sulfonic groups in CTMP or decreasing kappa number of unbleached kraft pulp. We hypothesized that this might be associated with the ionizability of acidic groups and the inhibiting effect of lignin on aniline polymerization. The beating degree of pulp seemed to have an insignificant effect on the conductivity of PAncoated conductive paper. As a whole, the interpretations of the influence of the chemical composition are based on proposed ideas and need to be confirmed by future experimental work.