FE-SEM investigations (Fig. 2) of the samples of partially and
fully doped SSA-PAni samples also confirm the formation of the
polymer structure. Slightly bigger PAni nanoparticles are apparent
in the fully doped sample compared to the partially doped one. The
size of the PAni nanoparticles in the fully doped sample was around
50 nm. Separately, a sample of bulk PAni (in absence of dopant SSA)
was chemically synthesized. The FE-SEM image of the bulk PAni
sample is shown in Fig. S2 (Supporting Information). The bulk
sample is characterized with the appearance of particles of the size
of around 250 nm. It is clear that the addition of SSA during the
formation of PAni governs the growth of smaller sized PAni
nanoparticles. Co-presence of aniline monomer and SSA leads to
the formation of a dopant–aniline charge transfer complex, which
assembles to form thermodynamically stable aggregate micelles.