Spectroelectrochemical techniques as modern tools for investigating charge transfer processes in conjugated polymers
Tomasz Jarosz, Katarzyna Krukiewicz, Mieczyslaw Lapkowski, Wojciech DomagaLa* – Department of Physical Chemistry and Technology of Polymers, Faculty of Chemistry, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland.

Please cite as: CHEMIK 2015, 69, 8, 485–490

Electrochemistry is a rapidly developing field of chemistry, whose fruits are widely applied commercially. Electrochemical analysis techniques allow charge transfer processes, taking place in studied systems, to be followed. Information obtained through electrochemical analysis alone is sufficient to describe a simple reaction, but with increasing complexity of investigated systems, it becomes more difficult to identify electrochemical processes taking place and assign them to specific chemical species. The first literature reports describing the use of spectroelectrochemical techniques studied electrolysis reactions of dissolved organic compounds [1–4]. In these studies, UV-Vis spectroscopy was used as a diagnostic tool to link observed current signals with changes in the concentrations of reacting species. Further development of spectroelectrochemical techniques brought on a multitude of reports, dedicated to a wide array of phenomena and materials [5, 6]. Among the latter, considerable research attention has been devoted to the design and study of organic compounds, belonging to the group of conjugated polymers. These materials are widely used in optoelectronics and are the basis for the development of organic electronics devices, such as modern photovoltaic panels, light-emitting diodes, field effect transistors, electrochromic windows and chemical sensors.

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