Abstract
Scientific interest in electrically conducting polymers and conjugated polymers in general has been widespread among workers in polymer science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, materials science and related fields since the discovery of doped conductive poly acetylene1,2. Many doped conducting organic polymers with conductivity spanning the range from insulator to near-metallic ∼10−15–103 ohm−1cm−1) are now known1–13. Of prime importance and fundamental interest in the continuing experimental and theoretical search for new conducting, and perhaps superconducting, polymers is the achievement of small or vanishing values for the semiconductor band gap (Eg), which governs the intrinsic electronic, optical and magnetic properties of materials. Existence of a finite Eg in conjugated polymers is thought to originate principally from bond-length alternation, which is related to the Peierls instability theorem for one-dimensional metals114–17. Here I describe a novel class of conjugated polymers, containing alternating aromatic and quinonoid segments, whose members exhibit intrinsic band gaps as low as 0.75 eV, the smallest known value of Eg for an organic polymer.
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Jenekhe, S. A class of narrow-band-gap semiconducting polymers. Nature 322, 345–347 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1038/322345a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/322345a0
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