Electrically active polymer materials

Hirai T., Zheng J., Watanabe M., Electrically active polymer materials - application of non-ionic polymer gel and elastomers for artificial muscles in Tao X. (ed.) Smart Fibres, Fabrics and Clothing, Woodhead Publishing, Cambridge. 2001. 

Electrically active polymer materials -application of non-ionic polymer gel and elastomers for artificial muscles... 

There is another type of electrically active polymer that is known as the electroconductive polymer, in which polymer chains contain long conjugated double bonds, and this chemical structure adds electroconductive properties to the polymers. In these cases, the electrically induced deformation is considered to have originated from the electrochemical reactions such as the oxidation and reduction of the polymer chain. For the deformation, some additives such as dopants have been known to be necessary for effective actuation. Therefore, the electrical actuation of these materials has been... 

Electrets are another t3q)e of electrically active polymer. These are materials that contain embedded electrical charges (155). Electret films are extensively used as membranes in microphones. The embedded electrical charges in the electret film eliminate the need to supply an external d-c bias voltage to the microphone. 

Conjugated polymers, including optically active polymers and dendronized polymers that are very useful in electrical and optical fields and asymmetric catalysis, will continue to attract interest from chemists and materials scientists. It is well anticipated that more and more polymers with interesting structures and properties will be synthesized from the transition metal coupling strategy. 

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