All-Polymer Conducting Fibers and 3D Prints via Melt Processing and Templated Polymerization
Journal article, 2020

Because of their attractive mechanical properties, conducting polymers are widely perceived as materials of choice for wearable electronics and electronic textiles. However, most state-of-the-art conducting polymers contain harmful dopants and are only processable from solution but not in bulk, restricting the design possibilities for applications that require conducting micro-to-millimeter scale structures, such as textile fibers or thermoelectric modules. In this work, we present a strategy based on melt processing that enables the fabrication of nonhazardous, all-polymer conducting bulk structures composed of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) polymerized within a Nafion template. Importantly, we employ classical polymer processing techniques including melt extrusion followed by fiber spinning or fused filament 3D printing, which cannot be implemented with the majority of doped polymers. To demonstrate the versatility of our approach, we fabricated melt-spun PEDOT:Nafion fibers, which are highly flexible, retain their conductivity of about 3 S cm(-1) upon stretching to 100% elongation, and can be used to construct organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs). Furthermore, we demonstrate the precise 3D printing of complex conducting structures from OECTs to centimeter-sized PEDOT:Nafion figurines and millimeter-thick 100-leg thermoelectric modules on textile substrates. Thus, our strategy opens up new possibilities for the design of conducting, all-polymer bulk structures and the development of wearable electronics and electronic textiles.

3D printing

conducting elastic PEDOT:Nafion fibers

organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs)

melt processing

electronic textiles

Author

Anna Hofmann

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Ida Östergren

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Youngseok Kim

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

Sven Fauth

Mariavittoria Craighero

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Myung-Han Yoon

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology

Anja Lund

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

Christian Müller

Chalmers, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Applied Chemistry

ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

1944-8244 (ISSN) 1944-8252 (eISSN)

Vol. 12 7 8713-8721

Subject Categories

Polymer Chemistry

Textile, Rubber and Polymeric Materials

Materials Chemistry

Infrastructure

Chalmers Materials Analysis Laboratory

DOI

10.1021/acsami.9b20615

PubMed

32043356

More information

Latest update

4/11/2023