title: Graft Copolymers with Conducting Polymer Backbones: A Versatile Route to Functional Materials.
abstract: Graft copolymers with a conducting polymer backbone are a promising class of materials for diverse applications including, but not limited to, organic electronics, stimuli-responsive surfaces, sensors, and biomedical devices. These materials take advantage of the unique electrochemical and optoelectronic properties of conducting polymers, complemented by chemical and/or physical properties of the grafted sidechains. In this Personal Account, we discuss our work in designing functional surfaces based on graft copolymers with a conducting polymer backbone, in the context of broader developments in the field. We review the synthetic approaches available for the rational design of conducting-polymer-based graft copolymers, and examine the types of functional surfaces and soluble materials that may be engineered using these techniques.
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical Sciences, The University of Auckland, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand.|The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Wellington, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Lisa T
authors.initials: LT
authors.lastname: Strover
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical Sciences, The University of Auckland, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand.|The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Wellington, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Jenny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Malmström
authors.affiliation: School of Chemical Sciences, The University of Auckland, Auckland, 1010, New Zealand.|The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Wellington, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Jadranka
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Travas-Sejdic
keywords: conducting polymers; copolymerization; molecular electronics; polymer brushes; semiconductors