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a) b - École Polytechnique de Montréal

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work <strong>de</strong>scribed above has focused on very low surface area porous substrates in or<strong>de</strong>r to<br />

<strong>de</strong>termine the lowest possible percolation threshold values of polyaniline, but high surface area<br />

substrates can also be readily prepared using this approach.<br />

5.2 Introduction<br />

One of the main contributions in polymer physics over the last twenty years has been the<br />

<strong>de</strong>velopment of electronic <strong>de</strong>vices consisting of conducting polymers(Contractor et al., 1994;<br />

Heywang & Jonas, 1992; Kaneto, Kaneko, Min, & MacDiarmid, 1995; Kraft, Grimsdale, &<br />

Holmes, 1998; Roman, An<strong>de</strong>rsson, Yohannes, & Inganás, 1997; Schmidt, Tegtmeyer, &<br />

Heitbaum, 1995; Wessling, 1994). This work has led to: the thin film <strong>de</strong>position and<br />

microstructuring of conducting materials(Heywang & Jonas, 1992); materials for energy<br />

technologies(Roman, et al., 1997); electroluminescent and electrochromic <strong>de</strong>vices(Kraft, et al.,<br />

1998); membranes and ion exchangers(Schmidt, et al., 1995); corrosion protection(Wessling,<br />

1994); sensors(Contractor, et al., 1994) and artificial muscles(Kaneto, et al., 1995). Electron<br />

conductive polymers, which are the result of exten<strong>de</strong>d π-conjugation along the polymer<br />

backbone, fall into the class of conductive materials exhibiting semi-conducting behaviour. The<br />

discovery of polymer light emitting dio<strong>de</strong>s(Burroughes et al., 1990), in particular, has brought<br />

consi<strong>de</strong>rable attention to the efficacy and lifetime of semiconducting polymer-based electronic<br />

<strong>de</strong>vices. The magnitu<strong>de</strong> of the electrical resistivity, or conductivity, <strong>de</strong>termines the application<br />

field of the <strong>de</strong>vice and these polymeric optoelectronic <strong>de</strong>vices can be classified in a number of<br />

different categories including: antistatic applications with a range of 10 -14 -10 -9 S cm -1 ;<br />

electrostatic dissipation applications with a range of 10 -9 -10 -5 S cm -1 ; and semiconducting<br />

applications with a range of 10 -6 -10 0 S cm -1 (Margolis, 1989). By controlling the range of the<br />

conductivity, the <strong>de</strong>velopment of <strong>de</strong>vices such as polymeric photovoltaic <strong>de</strong>vices(Halls et al.,<br />

1995), polymer-based lasers(Tessler, Denton, & Friend, 1996), and transistors(Garnier, Hajlaoui,<br />

Yassar, & Srivastava, 1994) have received consi<strong>de</strong>rable attention recently.<br />

Some of the principal approaches used in the preparation of polymeric conductive <strong>de</strong>vices are the<br />

fabrication of ultrathin films by various strategies such as the Langmuir-Blodgett (LB)<br />

137

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