“ELECTROCHEMICALLY INDUCED AGEING OF CONDUCTING POLYMERS”

W. MARMISOLLÉ; D. POSADAS; M. I. FLORIT

Los Cocos, Córdoba, Argentina

Simposio; "V Argentinian-Chilean Polymer Simposium" ARCHIPOL 09; 2009

Univ. Nac. del Litoral

Conducting polymers are a sort of electrochemically active polymers that can be reversibly oxidized to a certain degree in which they become electronic conductors. These polymers deposited as a film onto a base electrode, show a noticeable process of ageing. When they are brought to the reduced state, several of their properties change linearly with the logarithm of the ageing time (Rodriguez Presa et al., 2000). This phenomenon is quite similar to the physical ageing that amorphous solids suffer when submitted to a temperature below its glass transition (Struik, 1978; Hutchinson, 1995). The main difference between these two phenomena is that in the first case, the state in which the polymer ages is achieved not by decreasing the temperature but just keeping the material at a reducing potential. We have named this phenomenon “Electrochemically Induced Ageing” (EIA).