The discovery of conducting polymers opened up many new possibilities for devices combining unique optical, electrical, and mechanical properties. The literature on conducting polymers as reflected in its top-cited papers shows the diversity of materials that can be used, optical effects achieved, and underlying physical processes. The substances include organic polymers, copolymers, and conjugated polymers, such as poly(para-phenylene), polyaniline, and poly(p-phenylenevinylene). These can be fabricated to have high flexibility. The devices are mainly light-emitting diodes (LEDs), or, more recently, lasers, and the color of the light emitted can be chemically tuned. The main physical process involved is electroluminescence. The conducting polymers can be induced to transfer electrons to other materials such as Buckminsterfullerene. Inorganic materials can also be used to create LEDs, such as InGaN materials, or cadmium selenide nanocrystals, where the physical process involves quantum-wells.

Methodology

To construct this database, papers were extracted based on title- and author-supplied keywords for conducting polymers. The following keywords were used: conducting-polymer, light-emitting-diode(s), conducting polymer(s), conductive polymer(s), conjugated polymer(s), electroluminescent diode, light emitting diode(s), and polymer light-emitting diodes.

In addition, all of the papers citing the following five key papers on organic polymers that emit light were included:

1. J.H. Burroughes, et al., "Light-emitting diodes based on conjugated polymers," Nature, 347(6293):539-41, 11 October 1990.
2. D. Braun, A.J. Heeger, "Visible light emission from semiconducting polymer diodes," Appl. Phys. Lett., 58(18):1982-4, 6 May 1991.
3. P.L. Burn, et al., "Chemical tuning of electroluminescent copolymers to improve emission efficiencies and allow patterning," Nature, 356(6364): 47-9, 5 March 1992.
4. G. Gustafsson, et al., "Flexible light-emitting diodes made from soluble conducting polymers," Nature, 357(6378):477-9, 11 June 1992.
5. Y. Cao, P. Smith, A.J. Heeger, "Counter-ion induced processibility of conducting polyaniline and of conducting polyblends of polyaniline in bulk polymers," Synth. Metals, 48(1):91-7, 15 June 1992.

The baseline time span for this database was 1991 through June, 2000. The resulting database contained 4,888 papers; 7,959 authors; 76 countries; 458 journals; and 1,480 organizations.

Rankings

Once the database was in place, it was used to generate the lists of top 25 papers, authors, journals, institutions, and nations, covering a time span of 1991 through June, 2000.

The top 25 papers are ranked according to total cites. Rankings for author, journal, institution, and country are listed in three ways: according to total papers, total cites, and total cites/paper.

Ranking by total cites was used as the basis for determining which author, journal, institution, and country to feature in our editorial section.

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