Nanocharacterization of electrocoated polymers on carbon fibers

Electropolymerization of carbazole and its copolymers onto carbon fibers were performed by potentiodynamic and potentiostatic methods. Electrocoated polymer thin films on carbon fiber microelectrodes (CFME) were characterized by combination of a variety of techniques, i.e., cyclo-voltammetry, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), reflectance FTIR spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR). From XPS results the peak at 285.7 eV is assigned to C S bonding, for the poly[methylthiophene-co-carbazole]. Two distinct S2p peaks in a ratio of 3/2 was observed, which can be assigned to S in polaronic (binding energy: ∼164.7 eV) and S in bipolaronic forms. Broad band in FTIR-ATR centred in ∼3100 cm −1 supports these findings. S and N contents of copolymeric films (XPS) formed (at different initial feed ratio of monomers [Cz] 0/[MeTh] 0 = 0.35–1.85) on the CFME surface copolymeric composition was found to be ranging from 1 to 16 carbazole unit against 1 MeTh unit in the resulting chain.