Polymeric materials/polymers optoelectronic applications

Nowadays, polymeric photoconductors may be used in electrophotography, microfilms, photothermoplastic recording, spatial light modulators, and nonlinear elements. The combination of photosensitivity with high quality electrical and mechanical properties permits the use of such materials in optoelectronics, holography, laser recording and information processes. The applications of the various types of polymers were reported in the final parts of the relevant items in the earlier sections. Here, we will briefly analyze the common features of photoconductive polymer applications. The separate questions of each type have been dealt with in some books and papers [3, 11, 14, 329]. 

Liquid Crystalline Polymers are an important class of polymeric materials because they may exhibit optical properties similar to low-molar-mass liquid crystals and high mechanical properties of polymers. These polymers are broadly classified based on their molecular architecture, i.e. attachment of the mesogen to the polymeric backbone, as main-chain liquid crystal polymers (i) or side-chain liquid crystal polymers (2). In main-chain liquid crystal polymers, mesogens are incorporated into the backbone. The mesogens may be of different shapes and sizes, and are usually rodlike or disklike. Such polymers have not been used for optoelectronic applications because it is very difficult to reorient these materials by electric field. Instead, these materials find applications that use their exceptional mechanical properties. Even side-chain liquid crystal polymers, whose mesogen is attached to the polymer backbone through a flexible spacer switch too slowly for... 

Krzysztof Matyjaszewski received his PhD degree in 1976 from the Polish Academy of Sciences under Prof S. Penczek. Since 1985 he has been at Carnegie Mellon University where he is currently ). C. Warner University Professor of Natural Sciences and director of Center for Maaomolecular Engineering. He is also Adjunct Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and at the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is the editor of Progress in Polymer Science and Central European Journal of Chemistry. He has coedited 14 books and coauthored more than 70 book chapters and 700 peer-reviewed publications he holds 41 US and more than 120 international patents. His papers have been cited more than 50000 times. His research interests include controlled/living radical polymerization, catalysis, environmental chemistry, and advanced materials for optoelectronic and biomedical applications. 

Semiconductor-polymer hybrids are an important class of materials because of their combined properties of polymers and semiconductor nanoparticles. A number of methods are available for the synthesis of semiconductor-polymer hybrids from semiconductor nanoparticles, such as melt blending and in-situ polymerization. Semiconductor-polymer hybrids find applications in environmental, optoelectronic, biomedical and various other fields. 

In the past decade a great deal of attention has been focused on the preparation and characterization of 7i-conjugated oligomers and polymers due to their potential application as novel materials for optoelectronics. Initial attempts have been employed oxidative polymerization methods which led very often to low molecular weight compounds with poor defined polymer structure. The availability of newer, more efficient... 

The refractive index is one of the important optical properties in focus for nanocomposite research at present. Most of the conventional polymers show refractive indices between 1.3 and 1.7 only few polymers exhibit higher refractive indices such as polythiophene with n = 2.12. With the current development of optoelectronic applications the need to adjust the refractive index of polymeric materials is higher than ever before. Potential applications range from creating novel composite lenses for charged coupled devices, optical filters, or reflectors to optical waveguides, optical adhesives or encapsulants, antireflection films, or integration in improved efficiency solar cells. 

Polysilane high polymers possessing fully saturated all-silicon backbone have attracted remarkable attention recently because of their unique optoelectronic properties and their importance in possible applications as photoresists, photoconductors, polymerization initiators, nonlinear optical materials etc. A number of review articles have been published on this topic4-9. The studies in this field have stimulated both experimental and theoretical chemists to elaborate on understanding the excited state nature of polysilanes and oligosilanes and of their mechanistic photochemistry. 

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