Abstract
Highly versatile conductive polymers have been derived from a variety of processible precursor polymers to substituted poly(phenylene vinylenes). Key discoveries were made that facilitates processing of these precursor polymers. These include the ability to stabilize solutions of dialkoxyphenylene-vinylene precursor polymers against gel formation by the addition of weak amines, and the preparation of new non-ionic precursor polymers that can be processed from a wide range of solvents. In addition to structurally diverse precursor polymers, our recent discovery that strong protonic acids are applicable as dopants for conjugated polymers provides methodologies for directly processing these polymers in their conductive forms. Protonic acid doped conductive polymers can be obtained by thermal conversion of polyelectrolyte precursor polymers that contain conjugate bases of relatively non-volatile strong acids. Methods have been developed for the conversion of non-ionic precursor polymers into doped conductive materials in solution at room temperature. Conditions can be chosen to prepare either the undoped or doped conjugated polymer. Partial formation of conjugated structures from these precursor polymers gives copolymers that display liquid crystalline behavior.