Electrical and magnetic properties of the Fe3O4–polyaniline nanocomposite pellets containing DBSA-doped polyaniline and HCl-doped polyaniline with Fe3O4 nanoparticles

DBSA-doped polyaniline (DBSA–PANI) powder and HCl-doped polyaniline with Fe3O4 nanoparticles (HCl–PANI–Fe3O4) powder were mechanically mixed to obtain the Fe3O4–polyaniline nanocomposites. Powders of the nanocomposites were pressed to the pellets. Micromorphology, electrical and magnetic properties of the nanocomposite pellets were studied by using scanning electron microscopy and by measuring the conductivity in 100–300 K and the magnetization curve at room temperature. The DBSA–PANI pellets consist of long fibrils while the HCl–PANI–Fe3O4 pellets consist of granular particles. Thus the Fe3O4–polyaniline nanocomposites pellets consist of long fibrils and granular particles. The conductivity of the nanocomposite pellets linearly decreases from 0.19 ± 0.06 to 0.05 ± 0.01 S/cm when the HCl–PANI–Fe3O4 content increases from 0 to 100 wt.%. The variation of conductivity with temperature reveals that the charge transport mechanism can be considered to be one-dimensional variable-range-hopping (1D-VRH). All the Fe3O4–polyaniline nanocomposites show the magnetization curves. The saturation magnetization monotonously increases with increasing HCl–PANI–Fe3O4 content while the coercivity is estimated to be about zero independent of the HCl–PANI–Fe3O4 content. The saturation magnetization of the HCl–PANI–Fe3O4 is 11 emu/g.