Characterization of the Pani/MoO3 hybrid for ethanol electrooxidation

Polyaniline (Pani) stands out for its low cost of production, easy synthesis and doping/dedoping, high conductivity and optical, electronic and electrochemical properties. Due to the difficulty in its processability and low thermal, mechanical and electrochemical resistance, it is tried to synthesize hybrid materials of Pani with metal oxides and polymeric materials. Materials composed of semiconductor oxides and Pani are studied for their magnetic, optical and catalytic properties, which arise from electron transfer reactions between the polymer and the oxide, providing wide applications in the fields of electronics and optics. The Pani was modified with MoO3 and the optical, thermal and electrochemical properties of these materials were studied by UV–Vis, FTIR, TG and CV analysis. From UV-Vis and FTIR, the formation of composites was confirmed by presence the characteristic bands of emeraldine salt. The TG results showed that Pani/MoO3 hybrids presented greater thermal stability than the Pani. Voltamograms show that hybrids have the 2 par of peaks characteristics of Pani and upper current density at high scan rates studied. The lower intensity of the peaks pair at ~0.83/0.78V indicates that MoO3 particles stabilize the amine groups of Pani, its making the oxi-reduction reactions of these sites less favorable, which agrees with the decrease in the intensity of the ν(CN·+) band at 1222 cm-1 in FTIR spectra. Preliminary tests show that Pani/MoO3-5% has promising behavior in ethanol electrooxidation as is showing in the Figure 1.