Controlled growth of polyaniline fractals on HOPG through potentiodynamic electropolymerization

Polyaniline (PANI) in fractal dimension has been electrodeposited reproducibly on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) from 0.2 M aniline in 1 M aqueous HCl solution by potentiodynamic sweeping in the range of -0.2 to 0.76 V vs Ag/AgCl at room temperature. Fractal growth of PANI dendrimers is affected by diffusion limited polymerization (DLP) at a sweep rate of 15 mV s(-1) for 43 min. This type of PANI dendrimer is prepared for the first time on such large area HOPG substrate by electrochemical technique using rather simple cell setup. The fractal dimension has been determined by chronoamperometry (CA) and box counting technique and is found to vary from 1.4 to 1.9 with the duration of electropolymerization. The sweep rate, terminal oxidation potential, and the diverse surface anisotropy of the HOPG surface are found to be crucial factors in controlling the growth of such PANI fractals.