Conducting Polymers-Based Electrochromic Materials with Tunable Properties

Conducting polymers-based electrochromic (EC) materials have attracted wide interests on the applications of smart window, display and rearview mirror due to their better processability, the ease of color control, fast switching and high coloration efficiency.^1-3And for EC polymers, multi-color showing is one of the most important factors for commercial applications. Changing the structure of the EC polymers at the molecular level is an effective way to tune polymers’ colors, such as introducing functional groups, constructing D-A structure and copolymertization. Up to now, we have synthesized a series of conducting polymers base on thiophene, carbazole and triphenylamine derivatives. Among them, five different colors (including red, green and blue) could be realized, the higher optical contrast could reach to 76% and the switching time could be less than 1 s (about 0.6 s). The excellent properties have already meet the requirement of the materials for the practical applications. In addition, we investigated the influence of different donor (or accepter) units and multi-active position on the performance of EC polymers, which could give some reasonable conclusion and explanation.

References

1. H. K. Song, E. J. Lee , S. M. Oh, Chemistry of Materials, 17, 2232 (2005).

2. P. M. Beaujuge, J. R. Reynolds, Chemical Reviews, 110, 268 (2010)

3. G. E. Gunbas, A. Durmus, L. Toppare, Advanced Materials, 20, 691 (2008).

Fig.1 the electropolymerization route, spectroelectrochemical spectra and electrochromic properties