Conductive polymers - a surprising discovery 1.
Applications of conductive polymers 5.
Mechanism of polymer conductivity - role of doping 6.
Molecular electron-transfer theory 11.
Electroluminescent polymers - second-generation conductive polymers 13.
From silicon physics to molecular electronics 14.
References and further reading 15.
Prize motivation.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2000 to three.
scientists who have revolutionised the development of electrically conductive polymers.
Professor Alan J. Heeger at the University of California at Santa Barbara, USA.
Professor Alan G. MacDiarmid at the University of Pennsylvania, USA and.
Professor Hideki Shirakawa at the University of Tsukuba, Japan.
are rewarded "for the discovery and development of electrically conductive polymers-.
The choice is motivated by the important scientific position that the field has achieved and the consequences in.
terms of practical applications and of interdisciplinary development between chemistry and physics.
Conductive polymers - a surprising discovery.
We are used to polymers - that is, plastics - being somehow the opposite of metals. They insulate, they do not.
conduct electricity. Electric wires are coated with polymers to protect them - and us - from short-circuits.
Yet Alan J. Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa have changed this view with their discovery.
that a polymer, polyacetylene, can be made conductive almost like a metal.
Polyacetylene was already known as a black powder when in 1974 it was prepared as a silvery film by.
Shirakawa and co-workers from acetylene, using a Ziegler-Natta catalyst (K. Ziegler and G. Natta, Nobel.
Prize in Chemistry 1966). But despite its metallic appearance it was not a conductor. In 1977, however,.
Shirakawa, MacDiarmid and Heeger discovered that oxidation with chlorine, bromine or iodine vapour made.
polyacetylene films 109 times more conductive than they were originally.