Creating microstructures using conducting polypyrrole

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Engineering - Chemical Engineering, grade: 70, University of Melbourne, language: English, abstract: Simple electrochemical aided polymerization was done using pyrrole and beta-napthalenesulfonic acid as electrolyte cum anionic surfactant to attempt creating microstructures on sputtered gold surface, highly oriented pyrolitic graphite, and thiol-modified gold surface. Hydrogen bubble template was used on gold, but results showed doubted polymerisation around this. Instead, one tenth structure size of hydrogen bubbles was commonly observed in two different electrolyte concentrations. No interesting microstructure was formed on highly oriented pyrolitic graphite. This was due to polarisation of large size graphite. Irregular microcapsules were formed around n-decane template on thiol-coated gold, but other structures also appeared. Lack of control on many variables due to limitation of equipments and materials lead to inaccuracy and inability to do more detailed observation. However, some results showed research aim was achieved