Towards metallic polymers

Organic (synthetic) metals attracted huge attention in the final decades of the last century due to their envisioned futuristic applications at affordable costs. This field was boosted by the early advances in polyacetylene polymers

Researchers at IMDEA Na-nociencia, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Universidad Complutense de Madrid present a new strategy to fabricate quasi-metallic 1D polymers with atomic precision, in collaboration with The Czech Academy of Science, EMPA (Zürich, Switzerland) and RCATM (Olomouc, Czech Republic). This investigation within the framework of the ‘ERC Consolidator Grant ELECNANO’ and the ‘Comunidad de Madrid QUIMTRONIC project’ advances the possibility to design stable organic polymers with vanishing electronic bandgaps, whose applications range from molecular optoelectronics to quantum information technology.

Organic (synthetic) metals attracted huge attention in the final decades of the last century due to their envisioned futuristic applications at affordable costs. This field was boosted by the early advances in polyacetylene polymers, which exhibited high conductivity upon doping and opened a new route towards organic electronics and the Nobel Prize to their discoveries. However, scientists found that dopants compromised the stability of the polymers, thus reducing their applications as synthetic metals in real devices.