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Room-temperature ionic liquids could prove useful for the fabrication and operation of -conjugated polymer electrochemical devices. The team, tested polymer fiber- and yarn-based electrochemical mechanical actuators (shown), tube actuators, and high-performance electrochromic windows and numeric displays in ionic liquids composed of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium cations and tetrafluoroborate or hexafluorophosphate anions. The researchers demonstrate that dopable polymers such as polyaniline, polypyrrole, and polythiophene can be electrochemically cycled in these environmentally stable liquids for up to 1 million cycles at ambient temperature without failure. They also show that the polymers exhibit much faster cycle switching speeds than devices based on aqueous, organic, gel, or polymer electrolytes. The authors also point out that no part of their work was carried out in inert-atmosphere glove boxes, which often are required to fabricate and operate electrochemical devices based on pi-conjugated polymers.
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