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The journey of conducting polymers from discovery to application

Nature Materials volume 19, pages 922–928 (2020)Cite this article

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Shirakawa, MacDiarmid and Heeger received the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of conducting polymers. Here we summarize the impact of (semi)conducting polymers on fundamental research, synthetic accessibility at scale, industrial applicability and the future.

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Fig. 1: Structures, synthesis and properties of CPs.
Fig. 2: Applications of conducting polymers.
Fig. 3: Ongoing fundamental studies and exploration of applications.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission (KQTD20140630110339343), AFOSR (FA9550-18-1-0320), and ONR (N00014-20-1-2116).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

    Xugang Guo

  2. Flexterra Corporation, Skokie, IL, USA

    Antonio Facchetti

  3. Department of Chemistry and the Materials Research Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Antonio Facchetti

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  1. Xugang Guo
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  2. Antonio Facchetti
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Correspondence to Xugang Guo or Antonio Facchetti.

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Competing interests

A.F. is the founder and chief technology officer of Flexterra Corporation and has been a scientific advisor of Raynergy Teck. X.G. declares no competing interests.

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Guo, X., Facchetti, A. The journey of conducting polymers from discovery to application. Nat. Mater. 19, 922–928 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-0778-5

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