Conductive Polymer Nanotubes for Electrochromic Applications

Conducting polymer nanotubes are indispensable materials for the development of electrochromic applications. However, tailorable and efficient production of conducting polymer nanotubes in a cost-effective manner has remained a daunting challenge. Here we develop a template-assisted strategy that employs the natural-abundance halloysite nanotubes as growth templates and can be used to produce poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) nanotubes. The conformal growth of PEDOT would inherit the morphological features of the halloysites template, thereby endowing the obtained architectures with a tubular-like structure. Thus-derived PEDOT nanotubes with an excellent dispersion stability can be easily cast into a film. A systematic characterization confirms that a PEDOT nanotube film possesses superior electrochromic performance when compared with that of unmodified PEDOT.