Yes, some polymers can be doped with metal nanoparticles or nanowires, and depending on the metal type and on its load, the electrical conductivity can be effectively increased.
There is a lot of literature on conductive polymers. Just google it and you will learn easily. You are asking about conductive polymers and not nanocomposites. Once you dope wit h metal nanoparticles its no longer a virgin polymer matrix. Polyanilin, poly-3-hexathiophene are prime examples of conductive and semiconducting polymers. There are many ways to synthesize them. Cnage transport mechanism is not completely understood but its mainly due to creation and hopping of polorons and bipolorons
conductive polmer have electrical and optical properties similar to those of metals and inorganic semiconductors, and are widely used in the microelectronics industry, including battery technology, photovoltaic devices, light-emitting diodes, and electrochromic displays, and also in biomedical applications.conductive polymers such as polypyrrole (PPy) and, polyaniline (PANi) and, polythiophene. PPy is most commonly prepared by chemical polymerization when used with other polymers in blends
Polyurethane (PU) with good mechanical properties, processability, biocompatibility, and degradability has been widely used in the biomedical field. A series of electrically conducting PPy nanoparticle and PU composites with different ratios were prepared via an in situ chemical polymerization of Py in a PU emulsion mixture. The composites obtained exhibited elastomeric properties as well as conductivity
Conducting polymers also known as synthetic metals are entirely different class of polymers which possess electronic conductivity. Polymers are considered as insulators. However the discovery in 1977 by Shirakawa, Heeger and MacDiarmid that these polymers can be made conducting has revolutionized the area of research. Polymers with extended pie - electron backbone can be made conducting by doping with specific charge carriers. The examples of such class of polymers are polyacetylene, poypyrrole, plyaniline, PPV, MEHPPV, P3HT etc. The conductivity in these polymers can be tailor made. Conductivity of polyacetylene is 10E5 S/cm and the conductivity in other polymers ranges from 100 S/cm to 1 S/cm to 10-E3 S/cm. These polymers can be synthesized by chemical oxidative polymerization as well as by electrochemical polymerization depending upon the end application of these polymers.
I agree with definitions above, it has no sense to continue writing about it.
if you want to synthesize a conducting polymer I suggest you to start with polyaniline or polypyrrole (the latter 100 times more conductive than the first, but mor expensive too). For both, the synthesis can be performed in water, emulsion or by electrochemical methods. Aqueous synthesis is always easier to perform, and can be carried out in a 1M hydrochloric acid solution using a 1:1 solution of ammonium persulfate in distillated water as initiator. Controlling the reaction temperature (cold better) and the initiatior/monomer ratio you can control the polydispersion, chain lenght etc. There's a lot of papers about this synthesis.
Remember to distilate aniline or pyrrole with zinc grit before use.
To put it in simple words, conducting polymers are a class of unique polymers that can conduct electrical charge via the extended conjugation present within their chemical structure.. Of course, the degree of conduction is not of the level exhibited by metals, but can be related to that possessed by semiconductors..
Synthesis of common conducting polymers, such as polyaniline, polypyrrole, polythiophene, PEDOT, PEDOP, etc. can be better carried out via solution based oxidative polymerization in presence of initiator/oxidant such as persulfates.. Conductivity arises upon doping with mineral acids, such as hydrochloric, sulfuric or nitric..
Metal doping leads to conducting composites, where the conductivity enhances solely by virtue of the conducting metal.. This does not affect the inherent conductivity of the polymers..
Metal ion doping is done in specific conducting polymers where we design N-type of semiconductors like polyacetylene where doping is carried out to achieve p-type as well as n-type semiconductors. Na ions, Li ions etc are incorporated in the polymer matrix and the resultant polymer is termed n-type semiconductor. Similarly like in polyaniline system, doping is carried out by mineral acids or organic acids like HCl, H2SO4, H3PO4, PTSA, DBSA where protons as well as electrons take part in conduction mechanism. These type of doped polymers are termed p-type of semiconductors.
Polymers that can conduct electrical change. The simplest example is the Polyacetylene which contains extended conjugated common. So the polyacetylene can conduct electrical change.
There are some inorganic polymers as well conduct electricity; Polythiazyl [or poly(sulfur nitride)] is an interesting inorganic polymer that is synthesized via a ROP reaction . The polymer is synthesized from the (SN)2 alternating four-member ring dimer. The dimer is itself synthesized from the cyclic alternating sulfur nitride tetramer (SN)4, Which can be synthesized in a number of ways: The tetramer is an unstable orange-yellow crystalline solid with a melting point of 178 oC.
The conversion of the tetramer to the dimer that is used in the ROP obviously also involves a ring-opening reaction of tetramer vapor 85 oC at 0.01 torr) catalyzed with hot silver wool at 200–300 oC. The dimer is also very unstable (potentially explosive). It is condensed on a liquid nitrogen-cooled cold finger and purified to a colorless crystalline material by sublimation in vacucum at 25 ŽC to another trap at 0 oC.
The solid-state polymerization occurs at 25 oC (3 days) plus 75 oC for 2 h. The final product is a gold-metallic diamagnetic polymer that conducts electrons; in fact, it is a superconductor at very low temperatures (0.33 K).
(During the course of the polymerization a blue-black paramagnetic material is formed.) Unfortunately, the polymeric product is insoluble in all solvents with which it does not react, and it also slowly reacts with both air and water.