Nanotechnology and Conducting Polymer Fibres : Towards the development of nano-structured conducting polymers and nano-composite fibres

Smart materials are one of frontier technologies in engineering and manufacturing. A smart material is capable of recognising appropriate environmental stimuli,processing the information arising from the stimuli,and responding to it in an appropriate manner and time frame. It is well known that inherently conducting polymers (ICPs) provide some interesting possibilities in this regard. ICPs are polymers capable of conducting electricity and have the ability to sense and actuate, leading many researchers to envisage "intelligent polymer systems" based on ICPs. Fabrication of conducting polymers in different forms is necessary to achieve such smart materials system. Fibre spinning for example, can bring new opportunities to develop ICPs. Conducting polymer fibres are likely to be important for electronic textiles, actuators and biomedical applications, as they allow the possibility to incorporate desirable features such as chemical sensing or actuation that are not feasible other synthetic fibres. This book aims to produce novel "polypyrrole fibres" via the development of nanostructured conducting polypyrrole suitable for fabricating into fibres.