Nobel Lecture: Semiconducting and metallic polymers: The fourth generation of polymeric materials*

摘要: In 1976, Alan MacDiarmid, Hideki Shirakawa, and I, together with a talented group of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, discovered conducting polymers and the ability to dope these polymers over the full range from insulator to metal (Chiang et al., 1977; Shirakawa et al., 1977). This was particularly exciting because it created a new field of research on the boundary between chemistry and condensed-matter physics, and because it created a number of opportunities: