Polyphenylene chemical doping

It has been first demonstrated in 1977 by MacDiarmid et that films of polyacetylene can be chemically doped to semiconducting and metallic states. Shortly thereafter the possibility of electrochemical doping, resulting in highly conducting materials, had been shown not only for polyacetylene but also for a number of other polyenes, polyphenylenes and polychalcogenides. ... 

Finally, just a few words dedicated to the synthesis of polyphenylenes, extremely important polymers, and in particular substituted polyphenylenes such as PPV, which exhibit superb thermal and chemical resihence, semiconduchng properties upon doping and applicahons such as OLEDs. Contrary to their linear acenes counterparts, long polyphenylenes can be obtained e.g., by Bergman s method consisting in the thermal cycloaromatization of enediynes (Lockhart et al, 1981). 

The first conducting polymers (named ICPs for intrinsically conducting polymers, or ECPs for electroactive conducting polymers) were discovered in the seventies by McDiarmid, Heeger, and Shirakawa [1] who showed that unsaturated conjugated polymers (polyacetylene, polyphenylene) became conductive when doped, corresponding to the chemical oxidation of the ethylene or polyphenyl carbon chain. 

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