Syntheses of polythiophene and titania nanotube composites

A composite of polythiophene (PT) and titania nanotubes was synthesized. X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used to characterize these nanocomposites. The interaction between polythiophene and titania was analyzed by XPS and TGA. The XPS spectra of the composites show that the Ti2p peak shifts to a lower binding energy and S2p peak shifts to a higher binding energy. The TGA results also show that phase segregation occured when the nanocomposites contained 35% polythiophene.