Nanodevices from conducting polymers

3 April 2007

For utilizing the nanotechnology in day-to-day applications, the need and importance of multifunctional lightweight material suitable for fabrication of smaller devices is being felt. One of the main materials is inherently conducting polymer (ICP) that can be successfully utilized for fabrication of different devices. The successful application of ICPs includes LED, rectifying diodes, sensors, rechargeable batteries, transistors, photovoltaic cells etc.

The main difficulty with conducting polymers is their insolubility and poor mechanical properties and due to these properties the successful utilization of these ICPs could not be achieved to its full strength. The synthesis of these conducting polymers was also not an easy job as these were synthesized only in macroscopic precipitate.

The conducting polymer that is required for fabrication of nanodevices should be defect free and highly reproducible so that the synthesized material is always identical. It is a tough task to attain the nanoscale control over the structure and ultimate physico-chemical properties of the conducting polymer. In the last one and half decade there has been a numerous attempts to overcome the problems faced during synthesization and some of the attempts have successfully been materialized.

Now, all the forms of materials such as nanoparticle, nanotube, nanofiber, nanowire have been prepared from inherently conducting polymers. These materials were not only successfully characterized but were also subjected to various applications. A variety of application of nanodevices fabricated from ICPs in different field such as chemistry, material science, solid state physics, biological science are expected in the near future.

Related Posts: