ORIENTAL JOURNAL OF CHEMISTRY www.orientjchem.org An International Open Free Access, Peer Reviewed Research Journal ISSN: 0970-020 X CODEN: OJCHEG 2018, Vol. 34, No.(5): Pg. 2525-2533 This is an Open Access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits unrestricted Non Commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Effects of Dopant Ions on the Properties of Polyaniline Conducting Polymer HASAN FISAL ALESARY, 1 * HANI KHALIL ISMAIL, 2 AHMED FADHIL KHUDHAIR, 3 and MOHAMMED QASIM MOHAMMED 4 1,3 Department of Chemistry, College of Science, University of Kerbala, Karbala, Iraq. 2 Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Health, Koya University, Koya, Kurdistan Region, Iraq. 4 Department of Chemistry, College of education for pure sciences, University of Basrah, Basrah, Iraq. *Corresponding author E-mail: hasan.f@uokerbala.edu.iq http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/ojc/340539 (Received: August 15, 2018; Accepted: October 10, 2018) ABSTRACT This work will show, for the first time, the effect of nicotinic acid (NA) and 2-methylnicotinic acid (MNA)on the synthesis and properties of conducting polyaniline (PANI). The work investigates the effects of sulphuric acid (H 2 SO 4 ), nicotinic acid (NA), and 2-methylnicotinic acid (MNA) on the synthesis and properties of polyaniline. The results show that the preparation of polyaniline from a sulphuric acid electrolyte is faster than the preparation from nicotinic acid and 2- methylnicotinic acid electrolytes. Moreover, the electrical conductivity and thermal stability of PANI/H 2 SO 4 were greater than PANI/NA and PANI/MNA. All the polymers prepared in this study were identified using FT-IR. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to examine the morphologies of the PANI samples, from which it was determined that PANI/H 2 SO 4 has a fibrous and open structure with a higher porosity morphology compared to PANI/NA and PANI/MNA. The electrical conductivities of the PANI samples were measured as 1.09 S cm -1 , 0.65 S cm -1 and 0.089 S cm -1 for PANI/H 2 SO 4 , PANI/NA and PANI/MNA, respectively. The thermal stability of PANI was examined using the Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) technique. PANI/H 2 SO 4 was found to degrade between 450-500°C, while PANI/NA and PANI/MNA decomposed at temperatures between 300-400°C. Keywords: Polyaniline (PANI), Dopants (acids), Conductivity and Thermal stability. INTRODUCTION Previous studies have demonstrated that polyaniline (PANI) has electrical properties 1-5 , and therefore it can be classified as a conducting polymer. Recently, conducting PANI has received considerable attention and has been the subject of intense study due to its interesting properties, low cost, chemical stability and its potential applications in electronics, electromechanical applications and sensors. 6-9 PANI is widely used in composites in battery electrodes 8,10,11, and has been used in supercapacitors and microwave absorption systems. 12,13 The type and amount of dopant present during the polymerisation process plays a significant role in determining the conductivity of the resultant