Abstract
Polymers are widely used in a great number of applications because of their general properties such as low density, low cost, and processability. If these properties could be combined with electrical conductivity, this would open up the way to desirable applications such as flexible LCD’s and polymer electronics (cheap, lightweight, etc.). For applications requiring electrical conductivity, the choice of a suitable polymer is limited to polymers with a conjugated chemical structure such as polythiophene. Along the conjugated structures charge (i.e., electricity) is transported by charge carriers. However, the conjugated structure of conductive polymers inherently results in a non-transparent, intractable polymer, which makes them unsuitable for applications requiring transparency and conductivity (e.g., antistatic coatings on photographic films). These disadvantages can be overcome when a thin conductive polymer layer is applied on a polymer that has all desired properties for a specific application, but only lacks conductivity. A very attractive way to do this is by using the plasma technique. With this technique it is possible to modify the surface properties of a substrate, while retaining the transparency and bulk properties of the substrate material. Furthermore, it is a solvent-free, fast and versatile process. Plasma can be used to actually modify the surface top-layer (plasma treatment) of or to deposit a thin conductive layer (plasma polymerisation (PP)) on a transparent substrate. In the present study the plasma technique is used to obtain transparent and conductive polymer systems.
Original language | English |
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Award date | 10 Nov 2000 |
Place of Publication | Enschede |
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Print ISBNs | 90 365 15165 |
Publication status | Published - 10 Nov 2000 |
Keywords
- IR-9135
- METIS-105080