Materials Chemistry Commons^™

Synthesis And Characterization Of Some Rhenium Complexes, Joseph Brian Scott

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Plastics or polymers are thought to behave oppositely from metals. Ideally, polymers behave as insulators while metals conduct electricity. Shirakawa and coworkers discovered conductive polymers in 1977.1 These conductor polymers have been extensively studied, discovering that charge transfer oxidative doping of polyacteylene could increase its conductivity by 12 orders of magnitude. Polyacetylene, although showing promise as an organic conductor, because it is highly air-sensitive and oxidizes when exposed to molecular oxygen, therefore making this an unattractive use for commercial products. Attention has been focused on heterocylic aromatic polymers such as polythiophene and polypyrrole, in efforts to produce conductive polymers that …