A substrate-integrated and scalable templated approach based on rusted steel for the fabrication of polypyrrole nanotube arrays

We report here a facile, generalizable, and entirely scalable approach for the fabrication of vertically aligned arrays of Fe ₂O ₃/polypyrrole core - shell nanostructures and polypyrrole nanotubes. Our "all electrochemical" approach is based on the fabrication of α-Fe ₂O ₃ nanowire arrays by the simple heat treatment of commodity low carbon steel substrates, followed by electropolymerization of conformal polypyrrole sheaths around the nanowires. Subsequently, electrochemical etching of the nanowires yields large-area vertically aligned polypyrrole nanotube arrays on the steel substrate. The developed methodology is generalizable to functionalized pyrrole monomers and represents a significant practical advance of relevance to the technological implementation of conjugated polymer nanostructures in electrochromics, electrochemical energy storage, and sensing.