Preparation And Electrochemical Properties Of Poly- (ionic Liquid) Functionalized Polypyrrole Nanotubes

Polypyrrole is one of the most typical of conducting polymers with a lot of good properties (such as easy preparation, high conductivity, good mechanical performance and stability property).Ionic liquid is organic salts that is liquid in their pure state near ambient condition. It is generally composed of organic cations and inorganic anions. It has many excellent physicochemical properties (such as low flammability and toxicity, negligible vapor pressure, environmentally friendly solvents, good solubility property, stability and wide electrochemical window, etc). However, PPy is generally insoluble in water and most organic solvents and also shows poor dispersivity in water, which may greatly limit their applications in electrochemical biosensors. Recently, Poly(ionic liquids) have been synthesized by the introduction of some chemical groups associated with ILs into functional polymers, which present some of the above unique properties of ILs together with the intrinsic polymer properties. In this paper, PILs were introduced onto the surface of polypyrrole nanotubes, It not only overcome the hydrophobicity of polypyrrole, but also improve the dispersion of polypyrrole in the water or other solvents. Then, ILs or PILs have been used as the stabilizer or linkers to deposit the metal NPs, and the resultant nanohybrids exhibit high catalytic performance.In this paper, Novel poly(ionic liquids) functionalized polypyrrole nanotubes (PILs/PPyNTs) were successfully synthesized. Because of synergetic affects of conductive PPyNTs and biocompatible PILs, the excellent electrochemical catalytic activities towards dopamine (DA) and ascorbic acid (AA) were achieved by PILs/PPyNTs/GCE. It not only displayed a large potential difference enough to well distinguish DA from AA, but also the excellent sensitivity and good stability for the simultaneous detection of DA and AA. Then, Au NPs/poly(ionic liquids)/polypyrrole nanotubes composite materials were synthesized by the method of situ reduction AuCl4- on the surface of PILs/PPyNTs with sodium borohydride as reducing agent. PILs have been applied as the linkers between Au nanoparticles and polypyrrole nanotubes for the synthesis of Au/PILs/PPyNTs hybrids. Due to the presence of PILs, high-density and well-dispersed Au NPs have been deposited on the surface of PILs/PPyNTs. The obtained Au/PILs/PPyNTs hybrids were exploited as electrode material, which can act as a good steady and sensitive electrode material for detecting EP.