Does plastic conduct electricity?

Most plastics are non-conductive, but there are conductive plastics after improvement.

Conductive plastic is a functional polymer material made of resin and conductive substances and processed by plastic. Mainly used in electronics, integrated circuit packaging, electromagnetic wave shielding and other fields. It is the most important kind of conductive polymer materials. Because plastics are commonly used as insulating materials in the electrical field, some people regard conductive plastics as special functional materials.

Extended data classification of conductive plastics:

1, structural conductive plastic

It means that the plastic itself has "inherent" conductivity, and the conductive carrier (electrons, ions or holes) is provided by the polymer structure. After doping, the conductivity of these plastics can be greatly improved, and some of them can even reach the conductivity level of metals.

There are two doping methods: chemical doping and physical doping. Dopants include electron acceptors, electron donors and electrochemical dopants. Doped polyacetylene is a typical example. The conductivity can be increased to104Ω-1cm-1by adding an electron acceptor such as iodine or arsenic pentafluoride.

Structurally conductive plastics can be used to make high-power plastic batteries, high-energy density capacitors, microwave absorbing materials, etc.

2. Composite conductive plastics

In the composite conductive plastic, the plastic itself is not conductive, but only acts as an adhesive. Conductivity is obtained by mixing conductive substances such as carbon black and metal powder therein. These conductive substances are called conductive fillers, and the most commonly used are silver powder and carbon black. They play the role of providing carriers in composite conductive plastics.