A Review of Electrosynthesis of Polysilane

1. INTRODUCTION

In recent years, increasing research interest has been focused on the chemistry of inorganic polymers such as polysilanes, polygermanes, and the like based on the saturated linear skeletons of group 4 atoms. Among these, polymeric organosilicon compounds, namely, polysilanes having the catenation in its backbone, are studied [1–8] extensively because of their commercial functional uses, such as (1) a precursor for β-SiC fiber, a versatile impregnating agent [9, 10] for strengthening ceramics; (2) protective coatings [11] for carbon-carbon composites and coatings resistant to atomic oxygen [12] and the like; (3) radical photoinitiators [4]; (4) photoconductors [13, 14] for electrophotography and nonlinear optical materials [15, 16]; and (5) production of conducting and semiconducting [17] electronic devices. These applications are associated with their different chemical and σ-conjugated electronic behavior due to the unusual mobility of σ-electrons compared to most other inorganic and organic polymers