Conductive polymers’ electronic structure modification for multifunctional applications

Abstract

Modifying the electronic properties of conductive polymers is an important step in searching for environmentally friendly, secure, and efficient energy storage devices, sensors, transistors, solar cells, and many more. Conductive polymers are polymers with essential properties, such as: excellent electrical, chemical, thermal, and mechanical. However, the electronic structure of the conductive polymer determines to a large extent, the performances and their application areas. Therefore, this study examines the electronic structures of polypyrrole, polythiophene, and polyaniline conductive polymers. The effects of pH modification of the conductive polymers were presented. The electronic structure of conductive polymers depends on the chemical structure of the dopant-anion, in which the charge carriers are either polarons or bi-polarons. Moreover, the conjugation length of the polymer chain coupled with increasing polymerization time is responsible for their electronic property improvement.