Alan MacDiarmid

Alan Graham MacDiarmid was a New Zealand-born chemist who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering that polymers can conduct electricity when chemically doped.

Hideki Shirakawa: A Japanese chemist who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering conductive polymers. His accidental synthesis of silvery polyacetylene drew MacDiarmid into the research that transformed the field.
Conductive polymer: A polymer capable of transporting electrical charge through its molecular structure. MacDiarmid’s central research showed that certain polymers become highly conductive after doping.
Lower Hutt: A city in the Wellington region of New Zealand. MacDiarmid was born there in 1927.
Organic electronics: Electronics that use carbon-based molecules or polymers as active materials. Conductive polymers opened a route toward electronic devices made partly from organic materials.
Alan Heeger: An American physicist who shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for research on conductive polymers. Heeger collaborated with MacDiarmid and Shirakawa to show that doped polyacetylene conducts electricity.
Polyacetylene: A polymer made of repeating acetylene units, with alternating single and double bonds along its backbone. Doped polyacetylene provided the first striking demonstration behind MacDiarmid’s Nobel-recognized work.
University of New Zealand: A federal university system that operated in New Zealand from 1874 to 1961. MacDiarmid studied chemistry within this system before pursuing postgraduate work abroad.
Flexible electronics: Electronic devices built on materials that can bend or stretch without losing their function. Conductive polymers offer lightweight, solution-processable materials suited to some flexible components.
J. C. McLachlan: A chemist whose work included the synthesis and study of conducting polymers. MacDiarmid’s research career included collaboration with McLachlan on polyaniline.
Polymer doping: The introduction of chemical species that alter a polymer’s charge-carrier concentration and electrical properties. Doping raised polyacetylene’s conductivity by many orders of magnitude in the researchers’ experiments.

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