Applications of Inorganic Polymeric Materials II: Polysilanes

Polysilanes which cover one of the most attractive and challenging fields, are high molecular weight polymers with inorganic elements in their backbone. These materials have silicon atoms in their main chain and exhibit unique properties resulting from the easy delocalization of sigma electrons in the Si─Si bonds. There are many technical uses as well as applications of these materials such as precursors of silicon carbide ceramics; a strengthening agent in porous ceramic; imaging materials in microlithography; photoiniting in radical reactions; and photoconducting, conducting, and semiconducting which are due to the unusual mobility of sigma electrons. In this work, the main structural features, properties, and some other important and recent applications of polysilanes are discussed.