Muons penetrate much further than X-rays, they do essentially zero damage, and they are provided for free by the cosmos.
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Edited by Allen J. Bard, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, and approved February 10, 2010 (received for review December 1, 2009)
Abstract
Postdeposition solvent annealing of water-dispersible conducting polymers induces dramatic structural rearrangement and improves electrical conductivities by more than two orders of magnitude. We attain electrical conductivities in excess of 50 S/cm when polyaniline films are exposed to dichloroacetic acid. Subjecting commercially available poly(ethylene dioxythiophene) to the same treatment yields a conductivity as high as 250 S/cm. This process has enabled the wide incorporation of conducting polymers in organic electronics; conducting polymers that are not typically processable can now be deposited from solution and their conductivities subsequently enhanced to practical levels via a simple and straightforward solvent annealing process. The treated conducting polymers are thus promising alternatives for metals as source and drain electrodes in organic thin-film transistors as well as for transparent metal oxide conductors as anodes in organic solar cells and light-emitting diodes.
Footnotes
- 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: lloo{at}princeton.edu.
Author contributions: Y.-L.L. designed research; J.E.Y., K.S.L., A.G., J.T., and K.B. performed research; E.D.G., Y.S., and H.M. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; J.E.Y., K.S.L., A.G., and T.-Q.N. analyzed data; and J.E.Y., J.T., T.-Q.N., and Y.-L.L. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0913879107/DCSupplemental.
Directly patternable, highly conducting polymers for broad applications in organic electronics
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