Radical Polymers for Organic Electronic Devices: A Radical Departure from Conjugated Polymers?

Radical polymers are aliphatic or nonconjugated polymers bearing organic robust radicals as pendant groups per repeating unit. A large population of the radical redox sites allows the efficient redox gradient-driven electron transport through the polymer layer by outer-sphere self-exchange reactions in electrolyte solutions. The radical polymers are emerging as a new class of electroactive materials useful for various kinds of wet-type energy storage, transport, and conversion devices. Electric-field-driven charge transport by hopping between the densely populated radical sites is also a remarkable aspect of the radical polymers in the solid state, which leads to many dry-type devices such as organic memories, diodes, and switches.