The development of plastic electronics using conductive polymers has attracted much attention in the past decades because of their lighter weight compared with metals and high conductivities in the doped states. One of the best known p-conjugated polymers so far is poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT)Ðand its derivativesÐbecause of its excellent conductivity, high transparency, and stability in the doped state. [1,2] PEDOT can be polymerized either chemically or electrochemically with measured conductivities as high as 550 Scm -1 , [3] depending on the conditions of polymerization, solvents, and dopant. [4±6] Recently, the development of conductive polymers has opened new possibilities in the area of polymer blends or composites of non-conductive materials with conductive polymers for different purposes, such as electrically conductive thermal control film for the dissipation of spacecraft charging, [7] electromagnetic interference/radio frequency interference shielding, [8] membranes for gas separation, [9] actuators, [10] and organic light-emitting diodes (LEDs).[11] Usually, such polymer composites are prepared by mechanical mixing of the components in a suitable solvent, or by mixing the conductive monomer in a non-conductive polymer matrix followed by in-situ polymerization of it. [7,12] Our paper presents a novel approach to the polymerization and patterning of a conductive polymer thin film by using a well-ordered polymer matrix previously obtained using a liquid crystalline (LC) template. This approach could lead to materials that have better properties in terms of weight (they are much lighter than conductive composites that contain metals as the conductive component), elasticity and flexibility (if the percentage of conductive polymer is not too high), and conductivity (this depends very much on the selected dopant). First studies on the liquid-crystalline templating of the conductive polymers were performed by Shirakawa et al. [13] and more recently by Hulvat and Stupp, [14] but their approach differs from ours. Shirakawa used a large magnetic field to align the LC host while the conductive monomer (acetylene, a highly flammable gas) was purged over the free surface of the LC catalytic mixture, within an inert atmosphere. Hulvat and Stupp used a lyotropic LC host and electrochemically polymerized the EDOT. In the last case, the lyotropic hexagonal phase gave rise to uniform domains of £500 lm, but the orientation of these domains could not be controlled in any way. The aim of the study reported here was to enhance the conductivity of PEDOT by self-assembling the polymer in a wellordered fashion using liquid crystals as patterning media. Commercial (Merck) liquid-crystal mixtures, such as 8CB, E44, E31, TL213, and BDH 13739, were used as hosts for insitu polymerization of EDOT, but no alignment was obtained in these media, therefore we chose to form first a polymer network and then use it as a three-dimensional (3D) ordered matrix for further polymerization of the EDOT. Three types of polymer netwo...
