title: Cold plasma welding of polyaniline nanofibers with enhanced electrical and mechanical properties.
abstract: Joining conducting polymer (CP) nanofibers into an interconnected porous network can result in good mechanical and electrical contacts between nanofibers that can be beneficial for the high performance of CP-based devices. Here, we demonstrate the cold welding of polyaniline (PAni) nanofiber loose ends with cold plasma. The room-temperature and atmospheric-pressure helium micro-plasma jet launches highly charged ion bullets at a PAni nanofiber target with high precision and the highly charged ion bullet selectively induces field emission at the sharp nanofiber loose ends. This technique joins nanofiber tips without altering the morphology of the film and protonation thus leading to significantly enhanced electrical and mechanical properties. In addition, this technique has high spatial resolution and is able to selectively weld and dope regions of nanofiber film with promising novel device applications.
authors.affiliation: School of Materials Science and Engineering and State Key Lab for Materials Processing and Die and Mold Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Dong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.forename: Yao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xinpei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wu