Remarkable thermal stability of $BF_3$-doped polyaniline

We show that the recently synthesized $BF_3$-doped polyaniline (PANI) exhibits remarkable stability against thermal aging. Unlike the protonated PANI, which shows rapid degradation of the conductivity on heating in air, $BF_3$-doped PANI shows more than an order of magnitude improvement in conductivity. We employ x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and x-ray diffraction to understand this unexpected phenomenon