Plastic fantastic

Dr. Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo at The University of Texas at Austin has received a 2005 Young Investigator Award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation to find ways to improve the ability of polyaniline to conduct electricity.

Loo, an assistant professor of chemical engineering, will use the three-year, $264,000 award to seek a 10-fold increase in the conductive ability of the plastic.

That enhancement might be enough for manufacturers to begin considering polyaniline-based wires for products that include: electronic display screens that can be rolled up after use, clothing with polyaniline woven into it that changes colour when exposed to a harmful chemical, and implantable medical devices that release a drug when someone’s body temperature changes.

“Using this material to develop biodevices would be especially nice,” Loo said, “because polyaniline appears to interact well with living cells.”

To make the polyaniline electrically conductive, Loo’s has developed a new technique in which a polymeric acid is added to the polyaniline. Determining the optimum ratio of the two starting components needed to achieve the best conductivity will be part of Loo’s efforts.