Conductive Polymers

Sansiñena, José-María; Olazábal, Virginia

doi:10.1117/3.547465.ch7

Conductive Polymers

Book: Electroactive Polymer (EAP) Actuators as Artificial Muscles: Reality, Potential, and Challenges, Second Edition

Editor(s): Yoseph Bar-Cohen

Chapter Author(s): José-María Sansiñena, Virginia Olazábal

Published: 2004

https://doi.org/10.1117/3.547465.ch7

Abstract

It was thought for many decades that all polymers were inherently electrical insulators. This concept began to change in 1973 when Walatka et al. discovered that polysulfurnitride glasses [(SN)x] were metallic [Walatka et al., 1973]. The different studies carried out on polysulfurnitride led to the discovery in 1975 that this polymer behaves as a superconductor material at temperatures below 0.3 K [Greene et al., 1975]. This fact accelerated the study of several methods of the synthesis of similar materials [Street et al., 1977a; WolmershÃ¤uer et al., 1978]. In 1977, it was proven that the conductivity of polysulfurnitride at room temperature could be increased by several orders of magnitude by adding halogen derivatives [Street et al., 1977b; Akhtar et al., 1977; Chiang et al., 1977]. It was also seen that polyacetylene [(CH)x] and its derivatives became conductive when they were partially oxidized or reduced with acceptors or donors of electrons [Shirakawa et al., 1977; MacDiarmid and Heeger, 1980; Pochan et al., 1980].