Hopping in disordered conducting polymers

This paper addresses some important questions concerning hopping conduction in doped conducting polymers, i.e., dimensionality, homogeneity, adiabaticity, Coulomb interactions, and multiphonon character. It will be shown that electron transport in these materials is due to correlated hopping between polaronic clusters. We propose a model which describes quantitatively this process. Conductivity and magnetoresistance measurements performed on disordered polypyrroles doped with polyelectrolytes are presented in support of these ideas. This model emphasizes the role of the dopant as an attractive potential and as a tunneling bridge between neighboring chains. The dopant ions are the source of both the polaronic clusters stability and of the transverse conduction.