Strategies for molecular designing of novel low-band-gap electrically conducting polymers

Molecular designing of low-band-gap electrically conducting polymers continues to be a major challenge of the field of electrically conducting polymers. Such polymers are expected to show not only good intrinsic conductivity but also possibly a good transparency in the visible spectrum for their use as infrared sensors/ detectors. Low-band-gap polymers can also be of great interest as new polymeric materials for nonlinear optics. Various routes presently followed to achieve this designing with special reference to the donor-acceptor polymers and important results obtained with this route are briefly reviewed.