Conducting polymers semiconductors

Molecular recognition has influenced sensor development, first with alkali ions and later with more complex host-guest interactions. New materials likely to have an important impact in the future are conducting polymers, semiconductor nanoparticles, and fluorescent and colorimetric reporter molecules. 

Keywords Photosynthesis, purple bacteria, excitons, polarons, ultrafast dynamics, conducting polymers, semiconductor films. 

Chandrasekhar, P., "Nonlinear Optical Properties of Conducting Polymer/Semiconductor Interfaces", Proc. 38th Sagamore Army Mat. Res. Conf., Plymouth, MA, USA (Sept 1991). 

J. Kanicki, Polymeric Semiconductor Contacts and Photovoltaic Applications in Handbook of Conducting Polymers (Ed. T. Skolheim), Dekker, New York 1986. 

The interest of physicists in the conducting polymers, their properties and applications, has been focused on dry materials 93-94 Most of the discussions center on the conductivity of the polymers and the nature of the carriers. The current knowledge is not clear because the conducting polymers exhibit a number of metallic properties, i.e., temperature-independent behavior of a linear relation between thermopower and temperature, and a free carrier absorption typical of a metal. Nevertheless, the conductivity of these specimens is quite low (about 1 S cm"1), and increases when the temperature rises, as in semiconductors. However, polymers are not semiconductors because in inorganic semiconductors, the dopant substitutes for the host atomic sites. In conducting polymers, the dopants are not substitutional, they are part of a nonstoichiometric compound, the composition of which changes from zero up to 40-50% in... 

Chemical and electrochemical techniques have been applied for the dimensionally controlled fabrication of a wide variety of materials, such as metals, semiconductors, and conductive polymers, within glass, oxide, and polymer matrices (e.g., [135-137]). Topologically complex structures like zeolites have been used also as 3D matrices [138, 139]. Quantum dots/wires of metals and semiconductors can be grown electrochemically in matrices bound on an electrode surface or being modified electrodes themselves. In these processes, the chemical stability of the template in the working environment, its electronic properties, the uniformity and minimal diameter of the pores, and the pore density are critical factors. Typical templates used in electrochemical synthesis are as follows ... 

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