Benchmarking the Elastic Modulus of Conjugated Polymers with Nanoindentation
Journal article, 2025
The elastic modulus is a critical parameter for the design of conjugated polymers for wearable electronics and correlates with electrical and thermal transport. Yet, widely different values have been reported for the same material because of the influence of processing and measurement conditions, including the temperature, mode, direction, and time scale of deformation. Thus, results obtained via different methods are usually not considered to be comparable. Here, disparate techniques from nanoindentation to tensile testing of free-standing films or films on water, buckling analysis, dynamic mechanical thermal analysis, oscillatory shear rheometry, and atomic force microscopy are compared. Strikingly, elastic modulus values obtained for the same batch of regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) differ by a factor of less than four, which suggests that an approximate comparison is possible. Considering the small amount of material that is typically available, nanoindentation in combination with creep analysis is identified as a reliable method for probing the elastic modulus of films with widely different elastic moduli ranging from less than 0.1 GPa in the case of a polythiophene with oligoether side chains to several GPa for polymers without side chains. Since films can display anisotropic elastic modulus values, it is proposed that nanoindentation is complemented with an in-plane technique such as tensile testing to ensure a full characterization using different modes of deformation.
Author
Sri Harish Kumar Paleti
Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry
Shuichi Haraguchi
Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry
Zhiqiang Cao
School of Polymer Science and Engineering
Mariavittoria Craighero
Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry
Joost Kimpel
Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry
Zijin Zeng
Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry
Hot Disk AB
Przemyslaw Sowinski
Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry
Di Zhu
Applied Chemistry 8.1
Judith Pons I Tarres
Applied Chemistry 8.1
Youngseok Kim
Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry
Qifan Li
Linköping University
Jun Da Huang
Linköping University
Alexei Kalaboukhov
Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Quantum Device Physics
Besira Mekonnen Mihiretie
Hot Disk AB
S. Fabiano
Linköping University
Xiaodan Gu
School of Polymer Science and Engineering
Christian Müller
Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry
Stellenbosch University
Macromolecules
00249297 (ISSN) 15205835 (eISSN)
Vol. In PressElectrical Modulation of Elastic Moduli ELMO
European Commission (EC) (101043417-ELMO), 2022-09-01 -- 2027-08-31.
Hybrid and Organic Thermoelectric Systems (HORATES)
European Commission (EC) (EC/H2020/955837), 2021-03-01 -- 2025-02-28.
Stable Doping of Organic Semiconductors
Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (2022.0034), 2023-07-01 -- 2028-06-30.
Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)
Textile, Rubber and Polymeric Materials
Applied Mechanics
Polymer Technologies
Infrastructure
Myfab (incl. Nanofabrication Laboratory)
DOI
10.1021/acs.macromol.4c03081
Related datasets
Benchmarking the Elastic Modulus of Conjugated Polymers with Nanoindentation [dataset]
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15030674