The conducting polymer polyaniline (PANI) was prepared by electrochemical polymerization method. Electrochemical deposition of polyaniline coatings on stainless steel was carried out by the constant potential technique. This study will provide a better understanding of the corrosion protection mechanism of the PANI coating. The structure of the coating was determined by using Reflection Absorption Infrared spectroscopy (RAIR). The RAIR peaks ratios of the characteristic peaks (1590 and 1500) were used to monitor the changes in the structure of polymer with respect to the process parameters. The change in corrosion current with process parameters was correlated with the extent of oxidation of the polymer. The mean roughness, rms roughness and the 3-D morphology of the coatings obtained from atomic force microscopy (AFM) were used to correlate the surface energy changes of the coatings.

Key words: polyaniline, conducting polymer, corrosion, Reflection Absorption Infrared spectroscopy (RAIR), Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)