Optimization of polymerization conditions of furan with aniline for variable conducting polymers

A high-throughput multiparameter optimization of chemical oxidative polymerization conditions has been developed for a facile synthesis of furan homopolymers and furan/aniline copolymers using a combinatorial method. The polymerization yield, molecular structure, and properties of the polymers would be optimized against typical polymerization parameters, including oxidant species, medium species, temperature, oxidant/monomer ratio, monomer concentration, dopant concentration, and furan/aniline comonomer ratio. The electrical conductivity, lead ion adsorptivity, chemical resistance, and thermal behavior of the polymers were also elaborated. It is found that only a combination of FeCl(3) and nitromethane as oxidant and medium, respectively, is appropriate for the furan homopolymerization. The homopolymerization yield increases consistently with an increase in the monomer concentration from 0.05 to 0.2 M and the FeCl(3)/furan molar ratio from 0.25 to 1.25. Although the as-prepared polyfuran exhibits very low conductivity, down to 10(-11) S cm(-1), the HCl- and HClO(4)-doped polyfurans possess much higher conductivities of 9.2 x 10(-8) and 2.38 x 10(-5) S cm(-1), respectively. In addition, the conductivity of the furan/aniline copolymer rises steadily with increasing aniline content, although the copolymerization yield shows a minimum at the furan/aniline molar ratio of 60/40, which is evidence of the occurrence of a real copolymerization between the furan and aniline monomers. The difficulty of synthesizing conducting polyfuran could be overcome to some extent by the polymerization in an appropriate condition optimized in this study. Particularly, the difficulty of synthesizing poly(furan-co-aniline) having much higher conductivity than the polyfuran would be largely conquered by chemical oxidative copolymerization of furan with aniline.