Synthetic Methods to Produce Funtionalized Conducting Polymers.

C.A. BARBERO, D.F. ACEVEDO, H.J. SALAVAGIONE, M.C. MIRAS

San Pedro, Brasil

Congreso; 54th. Annual Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE); 2003

International Society of Electrochemistry

Conducting polymers are very interesting materials for electrochemicalapplications: batteries, supercapacitors, electrochromics, conductive support of fuelcell electrodes, wiring of biosensors, desalination systems, drug release devices, ionsensitive electrodes, electrochemomechanical actuators, etc.In contrast to inorganic conductive materials (e.g. metals), organic polymers areobtained from renewable feedstocks and it is possible, in principle, to produce a greatvariety of conductive polymers using organic synthetic methods. Therefore, theywould have an ever increasing role in sustainable development.However, an inspection of the literature shows that few conductive polymers areactually used in technological applications. Since simple conductive polymers (e.g.polyaniline) have undesirable properties, such as low processability and chemicalstability, one way to overcome that is to modify the chemical nature of conductivepolymers. While several specific modification procedures have been reported in theliteraturei, general methods to modify conductive polymers are still lacking.In our laboratory, we are carrying out a research programme towards developingnew methods to introduce functionalities into conducting polymers. Among them:nucleophilic addition, coupling with diazonium salts and copolymerization of anilinewith substituted anilinesii. Some of those methods could be chemically orelectrochemically controlled allowing a quantitative tailoring of the modification.The effect of the modifications on the electrochemical properties of the polymersis investigated using in-situ techniques: Electrochemical Quartz Crystal Microbalance,Probe Beam Deflection and FTIR Spectroscopy. Recent results, on the use of those methods to introduce functionalities into a polyaniline backbone, will be described.  The extension of those synthetic methods to combinatorial modification of conductive polymers will also be discussed.