Electrochemistry of polymers

Sollner, K., The early developments of the electrochemistry of polymer membranes, in Charged Gells and Membranes (Ed. E. Selegny), Vol. 1, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1976. 

Jernigan JC, Chidsey CED, Murray RW. Electrochemistry of polymer films not immersed in solution electron transfer on an ion budget. JACS 1985 107 2824-2826. 

A polymer film (nominally of micrometer thickness) on the electrode surface can be considered to be a solid-state electrochemical analog of the thin-layer cell. Thus, electrochemical processes within the polymer film can be modeled similarly to their thin-layer solution counterparts (with some important distinctions as discussed in Section I earlier and in what follows). Indeed, many of the theoretical developments in the electrochemistry of polymer-modified electrode surfaces were inspired by the earlier developments (in the 1960s and early 1970s) in thin-layer electrochemistry. 

The presence of polymer, solvent, and ionic components in conducting polymers reminds one of the composition of the materials chosen by nature to produce muscles, neurons, and skin in living creatures. We will describe here some devices ready for commercial applications, such as artificial muscles, smart windows, or smart membranes other industrial products such as polymeric batteries or smart mirrors and processes and devices under development, such as biocompatible nervous system interfaces, smart membranes, and electron-ion transducers, all of them based on the electrochemical behavior of electrodes that are three dimensional at the molecular level. During the discussion we will emphasize the analogies between these electrochemical systems and analogous biological systems. Our aim is to introduce an electrochemistry for conducting polymers, and by extension, for any electrodic process where the structure of the electrode is taken into account. 

These facts are different demonstrations of the same event degradation reactions occur simultaneously with electropolymerization.49-59 These reactions had also been called overoxidation in the literature. The concept is well established in polymer science and consists of those reactions between the pristine polymer and the ambient that promote a deterioration of the original polymeric properties. The electrochemical consequence of a strong degradation is a passivation of the film through a decrease in the electrical conductivity that allows a lower current flow at the same potential than the pristine and nondegraded polymer film did. Passivation is also a well-established concept in the electrochemistry of oxide films or electropainting. 

Our laboratory has planned the theoretical approach to those systems and their technological applications from the point of view that as electrochemical systems they have to follow electrochemical theories, but as polymeric materials they have to respond to the models of polymer science. The solution has been to integrate electrochemistry and polymer science.178 This task required the inclusion of the electrode structure inside electrochemical models. Apparently the task would be easier if regular and crystallographic structures were involved, but most of the electrogenerated conducting polymers have an amorphous and cross-linked structure. 

According to our initial hypothesis, these anomalous effects are the experimental results occurring under kinetic control of conformational relaxation. Here conformational relaxation is exposed over its entire length to the influence of the electrochemical variables, the temperature, the polymer-polymer interactions, the polymer-solvent interactions, etc. These are the monitors that can be used to validate each new step of theoretical development during our attempt to integrate electrochemistry and polymer science. 

This is the relaxation time of the polymer oxidation under electro-chemically stimulated conformational relaxation control. So features concerning both electrochemistry and polymer science are integrated in a single equation defining a temporal magnitude for electrochemical oxidation as a function of the energetic terms acting on this oxidation. A theoretical development similar to the one performed for the Butler-Volmer equation yields... 

The polymer-solvent interaction parameter, which is a key constant defining the physical chemistry of every polymer in a solvent, can be obtained from electrochemical experiments. Definition and inclusion of this interaction was a milestone in the development of polymer science at the beginning of the 1950s. We hope that Eq. 47 will have similar influence in the development of all the cross-interactions of electrochemistry and polymer science by the use of the ESCR model. A second point is that Eq. 47 provides us with an efficient tool to obtain this constant in electroactive... 

From Eq. (68), following a procedure similar to that described for chronoamperograms and voltammograms, theoretical coulovoltagrams were obtained as a function of the variables studied. The results189 can be observed in Fig. 67. Some new effects can be deduced from these experimental curves, which will allow us to provide a complete description of the electrochemistry of conducting polymers. 

It is now 20 years since the first report on the electrochemistry of an electrode coated with a conducting polymer film.1 The thousands of subsequent papers have revealed a complex mosaic of behaviors arising from the multiple redox potentials and the large changes in conductivity and ion-exchange properties that accompany their electrochemistry. 

The electrochemistry of conducting polymers has been the subject of several reviews2-8 and has been included in articles on chemically modified electrodes.9-14 The primary purpose of this chapter is to review fundamental aspects of the electrochemistry of conducting polymer films. Applications, the diversity of materials available, and synthetic methods are not covered in any detail. No attempt has been made at a comprehensive coverage of the relevant literature and the materials that have been studied. Specific examples have been selected to illustrate general principles, and so it can often be assumed that other materials will behave similarly. 

Voltammograms of a polythiophene film showing reasonably reversible electrochemistry of both types are shown in Fig. 2.M The formal potentials (average of the anodic and cathodic peak potentials) for p- and n-doping can provide useful estimates of the energies of the polymer s valence and conduction bands and its band gap35... 

The electrochemistry of conducting polymer films involves ion expulsion or insertion to maintain electroneutrality. As illustrated in Eqs. (1)... 

The electrochemistry of a polymer-modified electrode is determined by a combination of thermodynamics and the kinetics of charge-transfer and transport processes. Thermodynamic aspects are highlighted by cyclic voltammetry, while kinetic aspects are best studied by other methods. These methods will be introduced here, with the emphasis on how they are used to measure the rates of electron and ion transport in conducting polymer films. Charge transport in electroactive films in general has recently been reviewed elsewhere.9,11... 

Theoretical aspects of mediation and electrocatalysis by polymer-coated electrodes have most recently been reviewed by Lyons.12 In order for electrochemistry of the solution species (substrate) to occur, it must either diffuse through the polymer film to the underlying electrode, or there must be some mechanism for electron transport across the film (Fig. 20). Depending on the relative rates of these processes, the mediated reaction can occur at the polymer/electrode interface (a), at the poly-mer/solution interface (b), or in a zone within the polymer film (c). The equations governing the reaction depend on its location,12 which is therefore an important issue. Studies of mediation also provide information on the rate and mechanism of electron transport in the film, and on its permeability. 

Figure 20. Schematic diagrams of mediated electrochemistry of a solution species at a conducting polymer-coated electrode.

Although the electrochemistry of conducting polymers is now a quite mature subject, there is still considerable debate over most of the basic processes. In part, the issues have been clouded by the diversity of different polymers that have been studied. It is often assumed that conclusions drawn from data on a certain polypyrrole, for example, can be extended... 

However, despite this lack of a basic understanding of the electrochemistry of these materials, much progress has been made in characterizing polymerization mechanisms, degradation processes, transport properties, and the mediation of the electrochemistry of species in solution. These advances have facilitated the development of numerous applications of conducting polymers, and so it can be anticipated that interest in their electrochemistry will remain high. 

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