As polyaniline (PANI) has unique doping and dedoping characteristics

good morphology nanofibers can be synthesized under specific reaction conditions and new nanomaterials with special anticorrosion functional groups can be prepared via the dedoping and twice doping process. PANI nanofibers doped with sulfuric acid were dedoped by ammonia solution

and based on this dedoped PANI

twice doped PANI were prepared in phosphoric acid

p-toluene sulfonic acid and tartaric acid system respectively. The structure of doped and twice doped PANI was characterized by FT-IR spectrometer and UV-Vis absorption spectrometer. An electrochemical workstation was used to record the open circuit potential (OCP) and the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) of polyaniline/epoxy composite coatings

and their anticorrosion mechanism were investigated theoretically. FT-IR spectra and UV-Vis spectra indicated that the state of PANI was doped PANI in its emeraldine salt form. The electrochemical testing results showed that every coating had certain anticorrosion performance and the impedance value suffered a significant decrease at the beginning of immersion because the coating was permeated by the corrosive medium. The impedance value of twice doped PANI and doped PANI tended to stabilize after immersion for 22 d and 60 d respectively

the protection effect could be explained by the assumption that metallic cations formed a passivating complex with the dopant anion released from PANI

which improved the barrier property of PANI coating and slowed down the further corrosion of the metal. PANI doped twice with functional acid had better anticorrosion performance than doped state and twice doped PANI had higher impedance. PANI doped twice with tartaric acid had the highest impedance

the impedance value was 3.48×107 Ω·cm2 after immersion for 120 d

an order of magnitude higher than its doped state.