Abstract
Conducting polymers have been known since the early 1940s. They have been made by incorporating a randomly dispersed conducting filler into a polymer matrix to form conducting composites. The traditional fillers are carbon black, graphite, and metal powders etc.
Over the past two decades, a multitude of intrinsically conducting polymers have been developed, such as poly(p-phenylene vinylene), poly(p-phenylene sulfide), polypyrrole, polythiophene, and polyquinoline (ladder polymers). The structural features which endow conductivity also cause processing problems which make the direct use of these polymers difficult. It is essential to overcome these problems and one solution is to use the conducting polymers as particulate fillers for otherwise insulating plastics.
A variety of novel intrinsically conducting polymers have been synthesised and this paper reports the electrical conductivity of the filled systems. Another method of producing conducting composites has been investigated, involving immersing polymer films containing monomers such as pyrrole or aniline into various aqueous oxidant solutions. One advantage of this method is that highly transparent conducting films can be prepared.
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