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Electrical responses of pre-percolation PEDOT:PSS polymer 30 micron thick films with incorporated single-walled carbon nanotubes were studied by means of impedance spectroscopy technique. The quantitative description of conductivity features is attempted using equivalent circuit modeling. The proposed model is applied to the experimentally investigated nanocomposite systems with different loadings of the nanofiller.

This work was supported by National Research Foundation of Ukraine, project 2020.02/0217. IK would also like to thank VIAA, State Education Development Agency for Latvian state fellowship. HK would like to thank Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, project for young researchers No. 0119U100435. In addition, SP and AAP are thankful for financial support from Latvian Council of Science via grant lzp-2018/2-0083. HK and AAP are grateful for the support from the COST Action CA17126., The paper discusses the results of temperature studies of polymer-based nanocomposites obtained by incorporating multi-walled carbon nanotubes in thin layers of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythophene):poly(4-styrenesulfonate), specifically focusing on interesting features in the dependencies of electrical properties across the wide range of temperatures from ambient one down to 10 K. --//-- This is the preprint version of the following article: I. Karbovnyk, H. Klym, S. Piskunov, A. A. Popov, D. Chalyy, I. Zhydenko and D. Lukashevych,The impact of temperature on electrical properties of polymer-based nanocomposites, Low Temperature Physics, 46, 1231 (2020), DOI https://doi.org/10.1063/10.0002479, which has been published in final form at https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/10.0002479., National Research Foundation of Ukraine, project 2020.02/0217; VIAA; Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, project for young researchers No. 0119U100435; Latvian Council of Science via grant lzp-2018/2-0083; COST Action CA17126; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART².

Peculiarities of electrical properties of compound materials fabricated by introduction of single- and multiwalled carbon nanotubes with high level of purity into polymer host matrix were studied. Detailed investigation of lateral resistances of the prepared samples in the range of temperatures from 50 to 200 K were performed. Analysis of the conductivity mechanisms in this temperature range was performed by applying Arrhenius equation-based models. Temperature dependencies of lateral resistance were fitted to extract respective activation energies. Distinctions between fabricated specimens reinforced with multi-walled nanotubes and those doped by single-walled carbon nanotubes were demonstrated. It is concluded that composites with multiwalled carbon nanotubes generally exhibit lower resistances as compared to their single-walled counterpart.

Nanocomposite layers of PEDOT:PSS polymer which incorporate randomly dispersed carbon nanotubes were thoroughly examined by means of high-resolution scanning electron microscopy and subjected to electrical studies at different frequencies in a wide range of temperatures. Comparison between the performance of pure PEDOT:PSS layers, layers reinforced with single-walled nanotubes and those reinforced with multi-walled nanotubes is made.