Antibacterial Activity and Conductivity Studies of CoS Nanoparticles Incorporated in PVA/PVP/NH₄Br Electrolyte

Solid polymer blend electrolytes are widely studied due to their extensive applications particularly in electrochemical devices. Blending polymer electrolytes make thermal stability and higher mechanical strength and enhance the ionic conductivity while incorporate inorganic salt. In these studies, 50% polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), 50% poly(N-vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) and 10% ammonium bromide (NH₄Br) doped with different molecular weight percentage (M.Wt.%) of cobalt sulfide nanoparticles (CoS-NPs) as nano filler is synthesized using solution casting technique. The various M.Wt.% of CoS-NPs mixed blend polymer films are characterized by various analytical methods such as FT-IR, XRD, TG-DSC, SEM and Impedance spectroscopy. FT-IR, XRD and TG-DSC analysis are revealed the structural and thermal stability of the complex formation between CoS-NPs and PVA/PVP/NH₄Br polymer matrix. The ionic conductivity and the dielectric properties of PVA/PVP/NH₄Br/doped CoS-NPs polymer blend electrolyte films are examined using impedance analysis. The antibacterial studies are showed higher activity for high conductivity polymer blend film. The highest ionic conductivity is found to be 5.42×10^-4 S cm^-1 for the M.Wt.% of composition 50%PVA:50%PVP:10%NH₄Br:1.5%CoS-NPs with low activation energy 0.3373 eV at ambient temperature.