A conjugated polymer-based voltage-regulator device

A voltage-regulator multilayer device based on the conjugated polymer PAN (poly(5-amino-1-naphthol)) sandwiched between silver and tin oxide electrodes is reported. It is shown that after breakdown at V-crit the device is self-regulatory, maintaining an approximately constant potential difference V-stab between the tin oxide and silver electrodes: V-crit and V-stab depend on the polymer film thickness. The current-voltage characteristic is compared with that of another voltage regulator, the Zener diode.