Organic Electrode Reactions - Fundamentals and Applications of Organic Electrochemistry - page 178

Property Application

Conductivity
(doped state)

Conducting materials,
antistatics, capacitor
materials

Doping/dedoping
process

Electrochromic materials,
sensors, actuators, memory

Semi-conductivity
(undoped state)

Transistors, photovoltaic
cells, electroluminescent
materials

5.8.7 Electrochemical Synthesis of
Polysilanes

Polysilanes composed of linearly connected
Si-Si bonds are a class of σ-conjugated
polymers and show unique optical properties
[98]. The Kipping method, a well-known
synthetic method of obtaining polysilanes from
a dichlorosilane, is powerful but the use of Na
metal is indispensable. Electrochemical
reduction of chlorotrimethylsilane affords
hexamethyldisilane without the use of a
reducing reagent. Although polymerization of
dichlorosilanes by electrochemical reduction is
rather difficult, the use of an Mg sacrificial
anode results in the effective formation of
polysilanes ( Eq. 5.39 ) [99]. The mechanism
proposed is that Mg 2+ ,once it has been
anodically dissolved from the anode, is reduced
at the cathode to give reactive Mg. This involves
Si-Si bond formation of monomers. Cu and Al