Striding toward a new dawn for electronics
Conductive polymers are plastic materials with high electrical
conductivity that promise to revolutionize a wide range of products
including TV displays, solar cells, and biomedical sensors. A
team of McGill University researchers have now reported how to
visualize and study the process of energy transport along one
single conductive polymer molecule at a time, a key step towards
bringing these exciting new applications to market. “We may easily
study energy transport in a cable as thick as a hair, but imagine
studying this process in a single polymer molecule, whose thickness
is one-millionth of that!” said Dr. Gonzalo Cosa of McGill’s
Department of Chemistry, lead researcher.
Working in collaboration with Dr. Isabelle Rouiller of McGill’s
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, the team used
state-of-the-art optical and electron microscopes and were able to
entrap the polymer molecules into vesicles – tiny sacs smaller than
a human body cell. The researchers visualized their ability to
transport energy in various conformations.
“This research is novel because we are able to look at energy
transport in individual polymer molecules rather than obtaining
measurements arising from a collection of billions of them. It’s
like looking at the characteristics of a single person rather than
having to rely on census data for the entire world population,”
Cosa explains. Conductive polymers are long organic molecules
typically referred to as nanowires. Components along the polymer
backbone successfully pass energy between each other when the
polymer is collapsed (coiled within itself), but the process is
slowed down when the polymer backbone is extended. A greater
understanding of how this process works will enable us to develop a
range of technologies in the future.”
The studies are critical to applications in daily life such as
sensors involving the detection and the differentiation of cells,
pathogens, and toxins. They may also help in the future to develop
hybrid organic-inorganic light harvesting materials for solar
cells.
The research was published online by the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences and received funding from the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canada
Foundation for Innovation.