内容简介：
【简介】 This is a summary on the contribution of Alan MacDiarmid, the Nobel Laureate in 2000 as well as on conductive polymers and plastic batteries. Additional information are also available.
Until 1987, the billions of batteries that had been marketed in myriad sizes and shapes all had one thing in common. To make electricity, they depended exclusively upon chemical reactions involving metal components of the battery. But today a revolutionary new type of battery is available commercially. It stores electricity in plastic.
Plastic batteries are the most radical innovation in commercial batteries since the dry cell was introduced in 1890. Plastic batteries offer higher capacity, higher voltage, and longer shelf-life than many competitive designs. Companies are testing new shapes and configurations, including flat batteries, that can be bent like cardboard. Researchers expect that the new technology will free electronic designers from many of the constraints imposed by metal batteries such as limited recharging cycles, high weight, and high cost.
The development of plastic batteries began with an accident. In the early 1970s, a graduate student in Japan was trying to repeat the synthesis of polyacetylene, a dark powder made by linking together the molecules of ordinary acetylene welding gas. After the chemical reaction took place, instead of a black powder, the student found a film coating the inside of his glass reaction vessel that looked much like aluminum foil. He later realized that he had inadvertently added much more than the recommended amount of catalyst to cause the acetylene molecules to link together.
News about the foil-like film reached Alan MacDiarmid of the University of Pennsylvania. He was interested in non-metallic electrical conductors. Since polyacetylene in its new guise looked so much like a metal, MacDiarmid speculated that it might be able to conduct electricity like a metal as well. MacDiarmid invited the student's instructor to join his team in the United States, and this collaboration soon led to further findings. The University of Pennsylvania investigators confirmed that polyacetylene exhibited surprisingly high electrical conductivity.
