ISSN 1017-2548(Print)
ISSN 2234-8530(Online)
Volume 38, Number 12
JKCSEZ 38(12)
December 20, 1994 

Kinetics of electrochemical polymerization of aniline on a tungsten electrode in acidic aqueous solution was studied by means of cyclic voltammetry and kinetic measurements of anodic oxidation. Aniline molecule appeared to be intially oxidized via two-electron transfer to produce oxidized deprotonated aniline ion, which subsequently undergoes nucleophilic attack to the parent aniline and results in head to tail coupling to yield a dimerized species. But, being contrary to the case of Pt electrode, the propagation of polymerization occured through attack of the monomer by the oxidized aniline monomer to polymer. The growth rate of polyaniline was slow in comparison with the growth on Pt electrode. The degradation products were confirmed to be not p-benzoquinone(BQ) but p-phenylenediamine(p-PDA) by spectrophotometry, which agrees with the fact that oxidation of p-PDA was not observed below 1.0 V.