Polythiophene conductivity

Widge A, Jeffries-El M, Cui X (2007) Self-assembled monolayers of polythiophene conductive polymers improve biocompatibiUty and electrical impedance of neural electrodes. Biosens and Bioelectron 22 1723-1732... 

Crystallinity, molecular order, conformation in solid state Morphology and Density Properties of polythiophenes Conductivity... 

Fig. 4 Doping of polythiophene conducting polymer [20] (Reprinted with permission from Ref. [20] Cop3oight (2001) by Elsevier)...

Li B, Santhanam S et al (2(X)7) Inkjet printed chemical sensor array based on polythiophene conductive polymers. Sens Actuators B-Chem 123(2) 651-660... 

Conductivities of polymers of technological interest such as polypyrrole and polythiophene are typically 1000 cm in the doped state, and the conductivity can be tuned by reversibly doping and undoping the polymer. Derivatives of these and other polymers have achieved even higher conductivities. 

Functionalized conducting monomers can be deposited on electrode surfaces aiming for covalent attachment or entrapment of sensor components. Electrically conductive polymers (qv), eg, polypyrrole, polyaniline [25233-30-17, and polythiophene/23 2JJ-J4-j5y, can be formed at the anode by electrochemical polymerization. For integration of bioselective compounds or redox polymers into conductive polymers, functionalization of conductive polymer films, whether before or after polymerization, is essential. In Figure 7, a schematic representation of an amperomethc biosensor where the enzyme is covalendy bound to a functionalized conductive polymer, eg, P-amino (polypyrrole) or poly[A/-(4-aminophenyl)-2,2 -dithienyl]pyrrole, is shown. Entrapment of ferrocene-modified GOD within polypyrrole is shown in Figure 7. 

AppHcations of polythiophenes being considered utilize either the electrical properties of the doped conducting state with either anionic or cationic... 

The development of polythiophenes since the early 1980s has been extensive. Processible conducting polymers are available and monomer derivathation has extended the range of electronic and electrochemical properties associated with such materials. Problem areas include the need for improved conductivity by monomer manipulation, involving more extensive research using stmcture—activity relationships, and improved synthetic methods for monomers and polymers alike, which are needed to bring the attractive properties of polythiophenes to fmition on the commercial scale. 

In all cases of electrochemicaHy or chemically polymerized unsubstituted polypyrrole, the final polymer is intractable in both the conducting and insulating forms. In contrast, a broad number of substituted polythiophenes have been found to be processible both from solution and in the melt. The most studied of these systems ate the poly(3-alkylthiophenes) (P3AT). 

Conducting Polymers Electronically conducting polymers (such as polypyrrole, polythiophene, and polyaniline) have attracted considerable attention due to their ability to switch reversibly between the positively charged conductive state and a neutral, essentially insulating, form and to incorporate and expel anionic species (from and to the surrounding solution), upon oxidation or reduction ... 

Here we introduce a personal point of view about the interactions between conducting polymers and electrochemistry their synthesis, electrochemical properties, and electrochemical applications. Conducting polymers are new materials that were developed in the late 1970s as intrinsically electronic conductors at the molecular level. Ideal monodimensional chains of poly acetylene, polypyrrole, polythiophene, etc. can be seen in Fig. 1. One of the most fascinating aspects of these polymeric... 

Electrochemically synthesized and then oxidized and reduced conducting polymers, such as polypyrrole, polythiophene, and polyaniline, which are amorphous, are nonstoichiometric compounds ... 

The diversity of conducting polymers is best illustrated by Krivoshei and Skorobogatov s book,15 although many more examples have since been reported. The most widely studied classes, from an electrochemical point of view, are the polypyrroles, polythiophenes, and polyanilines21 22 (Structures 2-4), and these are the focus of this chapter. A wide... 

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 stoichiometry of the redox reactions of conducting polymers (n and m in reactions 1 and 2) is quite variable. Under the most widely used conditions, polypyrroles and polythiophenes can be reversibly oxidized to a level of one hole per ca. 3 monomer units (i.e., a degree of oxidation, n, of ca. 0.3).7 However, this limit is dictated by the stability of the oxidized film under the conditions employed (Section V). With particularly dry and unreactive solvents, degrees of oxidation of 0.5 can be reversibly attained,37 and for poly-(4,4 -dimethoxybithiophene), a value of n = 1 has been reported.38 Although much fewer data are available for n-doping, it appears to involve similar stoichiometries [i.e., m in Eq. (2) is typically ca. 0.3].34,39"41 Polyanilines can in principle be reversibly p-doped to one... 

Polymerization at constant current is most convenient for controlling the thickness of the deposited film. Charges of ca. 0.3, 0.2, and 0.08 C cm-2 are required to produce 1 fim of polypyrrole,59 poly(3-methylthio-phene)60 (no data are available for polythiophene), and polyaniline 43 respectively. Although these values can reasonably be used to estimate the thicknesses of most electrochemically formed conducting polymer films, it should be noted that they have considerable (ca. 30%) uncertainties. For each polymer, the relationship between charge and film thickness can... 

Figure 5. Cyclic voltammograms of (a) 2,5"" -di-methyl-a-hexathiophene and (b) poly(2,2 -bithio-phene) films in acetonitrile containing 0.1 M E NCIO 103 (Reprinted from G. Zotti, G. Schia-von, A. Berlin, and G. Pagani, Electrochemistry of end-ca )ed oligothienyls-new insights into the polymerization mechanism and the charge storage, conduction and capacitive properties of polythiophene, Synth. Met. 61 (1-2) 81-87, 1993, with kind permission from Elsevier Science S.A.)...

Besides synthesis, current basic research on conducting polymers is concentrated on structural analysis. Structural parameters — e.g. regularity and homogeneity of chain structures, but also chain length — play an important role in our understanding of the properties of such materials. Research on electropolymerized polymers has concentrated on polypyrrole and polythiophene in particular and, more recently, on polyaniline as well, while of the chemically produced materials polyacetylene stih attracts greatest interest. Spectroscopic methods have proved particularly suitable for characterizing structural properties These comprise surface techniques such as XPS, AES or ATR, on the one hand, and the usual methods of structural analysis, such as NMR, ESR and X-ray diffraction techniques, on the other hand. 

In 1979, the formation of conductive polypyrrole films by the electrochemical oxidation of pyrrole was reported for the first time This work has stimulated intense and fruitful research in the field of organic conducting polymers. Further important conductive polymers are polythiophene, polyaniline and polyparaphenylene. The development and technological aspects of this expanding research area is covered... 

Some progress has also been achieved in the use of chiral polymer films at electrodes. Conductive polythiophenes containing optically active substituents in the 3-positions were prepared by electropolymerization of suitable monomers without apparent lc s of optical activity The polymer of exhibits distinct... 

FIGURE 26.4 Simple conductive organic polymers. From top to bottom polyacetylene, polyaniline, polypyrrole, polythiophene, and polybenzene (poly-p-phenylene). (Adapted from Novak et ah, 1997, with permission of the American Chemical Society.)... 

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