Hideki Shirakawa

Hideki Shirakawa (Japanese白川英 树Shirakawa Hideki, born August 20, 1936 in Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese chemist. Along with Alan J. Heeger and Alan MacDiarmid, he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and development of conductive polymers in 2000.

Starting point for his pioneering work was his (supposedly random ) discovery that the electrical conductivity of polyacetylene can be increased by doping several orders of magnitude. Conductive polymers are used for example, as anti-static packaging for sensitive electronic components. Recent research has focused in particular on the development of polymer-based semiconductors for producing cheaper electronic components ( " organic electronics " ) such as transistors, light emitting diodes and flexible interconnects.

He works at the University of Tsukuba.

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