Introduction

Following the phenomenal success of silicon-based electronics, the development of polymer-based electronics has been continuously on the top of the agenda of materials scientists. The development of all-trans polyacetylene seemed to be the most obvious way, and the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2000 was awarded to Heeger, MacDiarmid, and Shirakawa for their groundbreaking work dating back to the 1970s in the field of conductive polymers, among others, polyacetylene. There was a long way ahead, however, to render this almost intractable, insoluble material (which needs to be doped to become conductive and which is unstable under ambient air) useful for practical purposes. Decades passed until the most successful triad, namely polyaniline, polypyrrole, and polythiophene derivatives, appeared on the market and became available for practical applications. As separate chapters are devoted to the synthesis of these materials, this development path will only be briefly mentioned; we will concentrate rather on the improvements in processing technologies (electrochemical or other redox coating techniques, solution-based processing, patterning, doping, etc.). The combination of the monomers into copolymers, blending of various conductive and non-conductive polymers, and various nano- and micro-composites of conductive polymers with metals, metal oxides, sulfides, and carbon-based fillers are also briefly mentioned. The stunningly wide variety of applications from anticorrosive coatings, electrochemical sensors and actuators (electrical muscles), printed electronics, electrode materials in energy applications, organic thermoelectrics, and biomedical applications will also be introduced.

Conducting polymers, polyaniline, polypyrrole, polythiophene