In-depth study of dielectric properties of iron chloride embedded polyaniline nanocomposites

In the present research work, the pristine polyaniline and iron chloride-embedded polyaniline nanocomposites were synthesized by adopting the chemical oxidative polymerization route. The AC conductivity and dielectric properties of the titled samples were measured in temperature and frequency range of 173–373 K and 100 mHz to 1 MHz, respectively. The result reveals that the dielectric constant of synthesized samples increases as temperature increases whereas it decreases with an increase in applied frequency. The dielectric constant of pristine polyaniline found to be ∼ 497 which attains value ∼ 875 on the addition of 25 wt% iron chloride, which indicates that dielectric properties are strongly affected by the doping of iron chloride. In addition to that various theoretical models such as Arrhenius model, Jonscher power law, etc. were employed to analyze the charge transport mechanism. The low value of AC conductivity signifies its strong dependency on both frequency and temperature. AC conductivity increases with the increase in operating temperature as well as applied frequency, which may be attributed to the increase in the concentration of iron chloride trapped charge carriers. Graphical abstract