Conductive Polymer Micro- and Nanocontainers

Jiyong Huang and Zhixiang Wei National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, P. R. China 

Micro- and nanostructured materials, often characterized by a significant amount of surfaces and interfaces, have been attracting intensive interest because of their demonstrated or anticipated unique properties compared to conventional materials. As an important type of carrier for foreign species, micro- and nanocontainers are common in namre, for example, the vesicles in living cells. A vesicle is a small, intracellular, membrane-enclosed container that stores or transports substances within a cell. 

So far, various structures of conductive-polymer containers have been produced by chemical or electrochemical approaches, including porous films, hollow spheres, tube-Uke 

Nanostructured Conductive Polymers 2010 John Wiley Sons, Ltd 

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Furthermore, porous CPs (e.g., polypyrrole, polyanUine) films have been used as host matrices for polyelectrolyte capsules developed from composite material, which can combine electric conductivity of the polymer with controlled permeability of polyelectrolyte shell to form controllable micro- and nanocontainers. A recent example was reported by D.G. Schchukin and his co-workers [21]. They introduced a novel application of polyelectrolyte microcapsules as microcontainers with a electrochemically reversible flux of redox-active materials into and out of the capsule volume. Incorporation of the capsules inside a polypyrrole (PPy) film resulted in a new composite electrode. This electrode combined the electrocatalytic and conducting properties of the PPy with the storage and release properties of the capsules, and if loaded with electrochemical fuels, this film possessed electrochemically controlled switching between open and closed states of the capsule shell. This approach could also be of practical interest for chemically rechargeable batteries or fuel cells operating on an absolutely new concept. However, in this case, PPy was just utilized as support for the polyelectrolyte microcapsules. 

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