Electrical Characterization Of Metal Junction Formed With Pure And Polyaniline-Blended Poly(Schiff Base) Polymer

In this paper, we demonstrate the formation of Schottky contact formed by Al with a new class of synthesized conjugated pure poly(Schiff base) (PSB) and its blend with varied concentrations of polyaniline (PANI). The Schottky behavior was transformed into Ohmic in the blended polymer. PSB was synthesized from the solution of polycondensation of terephthaloyl chloride (T) and 4-(4-hydroxybenzylideneamino)phenol (SB). The polymer showed good thermal stability with Tg of 312∘C as determined by thermal gravimetric analysis–differential scanning calorimetry TGA–DSC and high molecular weight 3.5×105 (g/mol) with coiled conformation as determined by laser light scattering. PBS was blended with various weight percentage ratios of PANI (0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15 percent by weight of the pristine polymer). The metal contact (Au) was formed and studied in the temperature range of 293–373K, which showed that Schottky behavior in the intrinsic polymer with an ideality factor was close to 2 and then reduced to 1.0–1.2 in the blended polymers. In blended polymers, the conduction across the junction was characterized by Schottky emission at low field and Poole–Frenkel emission at high field. The Schottky barrier height showed a small increase with temperature, which was attributed to reduction in the built up of image charge. The Schottky and Poole–Frenkel emission coefficients were also determined and Schottky emission coefficient agreed with the theoretical value, while Poole–Frenkel emission coefficient was small. In short, the metal–semiconductor junction was affected by the blending, while conduction within the polymer remained independent of PANI concentration.