Polymeric materials/polymers electrically active

The development of new polymeric materials for polymer electrolyte fuel cell is one of the most active research areas, aiming at the new energy sources for electric cars and other devices. The mainstream of the material research for fuel cell is perfluoroalkyl sulfonic acid membranes such as Nafion, Acipex, and Flemion. The most well-known one is Nafion of Du Pont, which is derived from copolymers of tetrafluoro-ethylene and perfluorovinyl ether terminated by a sulfonic acid group.Protons, when dissociated from the sulfonic acid groups in aqueous environment, become mobile and the membrane becomes a proton conducting electrolyte membrane. 

Advanced polymeric electronic materials lie at the heart of these material innovations in the semiconductor industry. These polymeric materials include polymers for patterning, insulating, and packaging of semiconductor circuitries and chips. More recently, electrically conducting polymers have been found useful as the active components of a... 

It should be noted that the correct choice of initiator, and any other additives necessary for efficient polymerization, is crucial to the preparation of material for use as a ferroelectric polymer. This is because of the essential requirement to subject the polymer to very high electric fields to render it electrically active (a process known as poling ). Any conductive residues in the polymer can make it polable only with great difficulty, or in extreme cases impossible, owing to the high probability of dielectric breakdown. Because of this, details of polymerization methods used to prepare commercially available electrically active material are not generally accessible. 

---