University of Tsukuba professor emeritus Hideki Shirakawa, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000 for developing conductive polymers, died of a metastatic liver tumor and cancer at a hospital in Yokohama on Aug. 24. A Tokyo native, Shirakawa graduated from the science faculty at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, now the Institute of Science Tokyo, in 1961. After serving as an assistant at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, he became a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, an assistant professor at the University of Tsukuba in 1979 and a professor at that university in 1982.
Plastics and other polymers had been thought to be nonconductive. While he was serving as a Tokyo Institute of Technology assistant, Shirakawa noticed a thin film that was accidentally formed when a research student failed to synthesize polyacetylene. After a detailed analysis, he made a lustrous thin film like aluminum foil.
Although it did not attract attention at first, Shirakawa succeeded in developing a conductive polyacetylene thin film with researchers, who later shared the Nobel Prize, while he was studying in the United States. The development was announced in 1977 and received high praise. Shirakawa’s polyacetylene thin film drew attention as an electrode material during the development stage of lithium-ion batteries, which helped trigger the explosive spread of mobile devices.
Conductive polymers, such as polyacetylene, are used in touch screens and many other cutting-edge devices.
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