Publication Date

8-2009

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Dr. Chad Snyder (Director), Dr. Eric Conte,Dr. Kevin Williams

Degree Program

Department of Chemistry

Degree Type

Master of Science

Abstract

Plastics or polymers are thought to behave oppositely from metals. Ideally, polymers behave as insulators while metals conduct electricity. Shirakawa and coworkers discovered conductive polymers in 1977.1 These conductor polymers have been extensively studied, discovering that charge transfer oxidative doping of polyacteylene could increase its conductivity by 12 orders of magnitude. Polyacetylene, although showing promise as an organic conductor, because it is highly air-sensitive and oxidizes when exposed to molecular oxygen, therefore making this an unattractive use for commercial products. Attention has been focused on heterocylic aromatic polymers such as polythiophene and polypyrrole, in efforts to produce conductive polymers that are air-stable, tractable, and have a low band gap. The lone-pair electrons of the sulfur and nitrogen atoms tend to stabilize the positive charges of the p-doped polymers through resonance. 2

By using Shirakawas’ idea of using polypyrrole as the focus point of our research and expanding upon that by the addition of a rhenium metal to an organic compound, (1,2-C5H3(CNR)2) and this should offer some new and interesting chemical properties. These new properties are; new optical properties, new electronic properties, improved physical properties, and a reversible electrochemical shift. This research will help in the field of organometallic semiconductors in applications such as OLED’s, and electrochromic windows.3-6

Disciplines

Chemical Engineering | Materials Chemistry | Polymer Chemistry | Polymer Science

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