Conductive and semiconductive polymers of current interest

In the ten years that have elapsed since the appearance of the Handbook of Conducting Polymers [1] in 1986, the effort dedicated to the research of synthetic metals has continued to grow. The group of polymers on which this research is focused nowadays is largely the same as then but the emphasis has shifted. Ten years ago the attention of the scientific community was very much on two polymers (i) polyacetylene, for which various synthetic routes leading to appreciably crystalline material had become available, and (ii) polypyrrole, which showed very attractive conduction properties although it was found to be highly disordered and hard to characterize, 

By 1995 one finds that the main actors are different polymers, a change which can be partly attributed to the recent interest in semiconductor properties, especially light emission. In the field of conduction, polyacetylene has given its place to polyaniline, a polymer with a fascinating rich chemistry and a promise of good processability. In the semiconductor arena, the most studied polymer of the past decade is polythiophene, or rather its soluble derivatives which lend themselves very well to various fabrication processes. Another polymer, one which was only mentioned briefly in the 1986 Handbook, is competing with polythiophene for application in semiconductor devices poly(pura-phenylene vinylene). These three polymers received very little interest before 1985 no crystallographic studies had been published at that time. 

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