The Scope of This Historical Overview

A lot of fragments of the conducting polymers scientific history can be found in the chemical literature or in Internet articles. There are several specialized chapters in monographs, and also remarks in publications, dealing with early investigations in the special field of the respective paper, including a more or less adequate number of citations. Also anecdotes, dealing with the influence of the human factor in the history of conductive polymers can be found, particularly on the Internet. 

The following chapter tries to give an overview from the perception of the authors. A sufficient compromise between details, completeness, under-standability for nonspecialists, and novelty for specialists is not easy to find. Furthermore, historical aspects can be a matter of subjective assessments. As a result, a combination of hard facts and information on one side mixed with personal opinion, and older information, replenished by more recent developments, will be presented. To be readable for nonspecialists of conductive polymer chemistry and to give references to more detailed information for interested readers are further goals. 

As this book is a FEDOT, or poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), monograph and FEDOT is one of the most highly conductive polymers, the historical overview focuses on highly conductive polymers directly competing with FEDOT. Hence, this chapter is not extended to all jr-conjugated polymers, as it is often found in reviews in this field. A short overview of polythiophenes other than FEDOT—mainly to be classified as semiconductors— will be given in Chapter 3, where the development of FEDOT is described in the context of thiophene chemistry. 

Last but not least the chapter follows the wonderful advice cited by W. James Feast in his contribution Synthesis of Conducting Folymers in the second edition of the Handbook of Conducting Polymers, although not used in the very same sense  

So the historical overview will begin—after the inevitable introduction—at the true beginning. 

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