Chemical synthesis of hollow sea urchin like nanostructured polypyrrole particles through a core-shell redox mechanism using a MnO2 powder as oxidizing agent and sacrificial nanostructured template. Synthetic Metals, Elsevier, 2013, 175, pp.192-199. 10.1016/j.synthmet.2013 1 Chemical synthesis of hollow sea urchin like nanostructured polypyrrole particles through a core-shell redox mechanism using a MnO 2 powder as oxidizing agent and sacrificial nanostructured template
AbstractHollow sea urchin shaped nanostructured polypyrrole powder was successfully synthesized chemically in an acidic medium through a core-shell redox mechanism by using a nanostructured MnO 2 powder as oxidizing agent and sacrificial template simultaneously. The morphology and the structure of MnO 2 powder based reactant and produced polypyrrole powder were characterized respectively by using FEG-SEM, TEM, EDX and XRD techniques, which led us to demonstrate clearly the formation of hollow and open microparticles of polypyrrole with the presence of nanotubes on their surface. Nanostructured polypyrrole powder was found to be rather amorphous even though the shape of the polypyrrole particles was induced by the crystalline and nanostructured sea urchin shaped MnO 2 powder on which they grew. In addition, neither MnO 2 nor any manganese based species were found within the produced polypyrrole powder, which ruled out the production of composite materials. cations as reaction products isolated after filtration of the reaction medium.