ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION AND SCOPE The poly(arylene vinylene) (PAV) family of conjugated polymers has been of con siderable interest for over a century. Computerized literature searches citing poly(l,4-phenylene vinylene) (PPV) and its derivatives alone find thousands of articles. As a result, it is impossible to give a comprehensive review of all PAV and PPV related work in a single book chapter. We shall therefore limit ourselves to discussing the synthetic methodologies which lead to PPV formation, and an overview of some of the properties of PAVs which have made them so promising and widely studied, especially during the past two decades. The focus will be on PPV derivatives, although we will also describe some of the PAVs that have shown considerable promise. In general, we shall also limit discussion to polymers without meta-connectivity. The reader who is interested in specific details is referred to the original literature, and to various specialty reviews which are cited within this chapter.
