Polymer electrochromic materials sensors

Conjugated polymers, discovered in the late 1970s, have attracted a variety of attentions because of their unique properties, such as electrical conductivity and color versatility. The conjugated polymers with different colors can be used as ideal electrochromic materials, which have potential applications in sensors, mirrors, displayers, and textiles. Most of their reversible electrochromic behaviors are caused by the electro-induced oxidation-reduction, that is, the reversible change of a chemical species between two redox states under a certain voltage (Niklasson and Granqvist, 2007 Beaujuge et al., 2010). 

The development of conducting polymers is naturally related to hopes of feasible technical applications. Thus, conducting polymers are discussed as active battery electrodes [10], electrochromic displays (BCD) [11], anticorrosives [12], sensors [13], electrocatalysts [14], antistatic materials [15], or light-emitting materials (OLED) [16],... 

Utilizing these functionalized conducting polymers, a solar cell, an electrochromic device, a chemical luminescent material, a sensor, a polymer battery, etc. can be constructed, in which the functionality is attributed to the incorporated functional molecule. 

K-Conjugated polymers and oligomers are organic materials with many interesting and useful properties [1, 2], Examples of this class of materials include polyacetylene, polythiophene, polypyrrole, poly(phenylenevinylene) and their derivatives. Electronic conductivity, luminescence and nonlinear optical behavior are all observed in these materials and these properties have been exploited in applications such as electroluminescent devices (polymer light-emitting devices or PLEDs), electrostatic coatings, electrochromic windows, chemical sensors and memory devices [3-9]. 

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