Polyacetylence, (CH)x is the simplest conjugated polymer. Prestine polyacetylence is a good insulator, whereas its highly doped version exhibits metal-like electrical conductivity. This book gives a detailed introduction to this rapidly-developing field is given along with a collection of original papers. The main purpose is to help chemists and physicists grasp the main ideas and most important facts; an expert may also find it useful as a reference volume.

Polyacetylence, (CH)x is the simplest conjugated polymer. Prestine polyacetylence is a good insulator, whereas its highly doped version exhibits metal-like electrical conductivity. This book gives a detailed introduction to this rapidly-developing field is given along with a collection of original papers. The main purpose is to help chemists and physicists grasp the main ideas and most important facts; an expert may also find it useful as a reference volume.

Polyacetylence, (CH)x is the simplest conjugated polymer. Prestine polyacetylence is a good insulator, whereas its highly doped version exhibits metal-like electrical conductivity. This book gives a detailed introduction to this rapidly-developing field is given along with a collection of original papers. The main purpose is to help chemists and physicists grasp the main ideas and most important facts; an expert may also find it useful as a reference volume.

This book reviews the current understanding of electronic, optical and magnetic properties of conjugated polymers in both the semiconducting and metallic states. It introduces in particular novel phenomena and concepts in these quasi one-dimensional materials that differ from the well-established concepts valid for crystalline semiconductors. After a brief introductory chapter, the second chapter presents basic theore tical concepts and treats in detail the various models for n-conjugated polymers and the computational methods required to derive observable quantities. Specific spatially localized structures, often referred to as solitons, polarons and bipolarons, result naturally from the interaction between n-electrons and lattice displacements. For a semi-quantitative understanding of the various measure ments, electron-electron interactions have to be incorporated in the models; this in turn makes the calculations rather complicated. The third chapter is devoted to the electrical properties of these materials. The high metallic conductivity achieved by doping gave rise to the expression conducting polymers, which is often used for such materials even when they are in their semiconducting or insulating state. Although conductivity is one of the most important features, the reader will learn how difficult it is to draw definite conclusions about the nature of the charge carriers and the microscopic transport mechanism solely from electrical measurements. Optical properties are discussed in the fourth chapter.