Studies on increasing conductivity of polyurethane films and nanofibers

There is a growing interest in development of textiles with electrical conductivity due to the variety of applications including electromagnetic interference shielding, electrostatic dissipating, antistatic applications, microwave reduction, gas sensors, biomechanical sensors. Polypyrrole is one of the most promising conductive polymers due to its high electrical conductivity and good chemical stability, however it has some drawbacks such as poor processability. In this paper, production of nanofibers of Polyurethane by using polypyrrole was studied. Films and nanofibers of PU-PPy were successfully prepared for the purpose of combining the properties of polyurethane with polypyrrole. The effects of polypyrrole content on thermal, mechanical, dielectric and morphological properties of the composites were investigated by using Dynamic Mechanical Analyzer (DMA), Dielectric Spectrometer, UV - Vis spectrophotometer and the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM).