Comparison of microwave and electrical properties of selected conducting polymers

Microwave properties of conductive polymers is crucial because of their wide areas of applications such as coating in reflector antennas, coating in electronic equipments, frequency selective surfaces, EMI materials, satellite communication links, microchip antennas, and medical applications. This work involves a comparative study of dielectric properties of selected conducting polymers such as polyaniline, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene), polythiophene, polypyrrole, and polyparaphenylene diazomethine (PPDA) in microwave and DC fields. The microwave properties such as dielectric constant, dielectric loss, absorption coefficient, heating coefficient, skin depth, and conductivity in the microwave frequency (S band), and DC fields were compared. PEDOT and polyaniline were found to exhibit excellent properties in DC field and microwave frequencies, which make them potential materials in many of the aforementioned applications. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 504–508, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23091