Fluorination is a common strategy for improving the electronic properties of π-conjugated materials, and this has shown to be important for applications in organic electronics, especially for the fabrication of...
We provide the initial
demonstration of a general thin film deposition
technique that leverages the unique solubility properties of supercritical
fluids. The technique is the solution-phase analogue of physical vapor
deposition and allows thin films of a semiconducting polymer to be
grown without the need for in situ chemical reactions. Film growth
is approximately linear with time, indicating that film thickness
can be controlled in a straightforward manner by varying the time
of deposition. To further demonstrate the flexibility of the technique,
we demonstrate precise control over the location of material deposition
using a combination of photolithography and resistive heating. The
potential for scalable manufacturing is demonstrated by use of a master
to control deposition onto a flexible polymer film. Finally, we demonstrate
a unique deposition capability of this technique by depositing patterns
onto the curved interior of a hemisphere made from a silicone elastomer.
This capability is not possible with any printing or line-of-sight
deposition technique. More generally, the ability to control the deposition
of solution processed materials with high accuracy provides the long
sought after bridge between top-down and bottom-up self-assembly.
Polyethylene is amongst the most used polymers, finding a plethora of applications in our lives owing to its high impact resistance, non-corrosive nature, light weight, cost effectiveness, and easy processing into various shapes from different sizes. Despite these outstanding features, the commodity polymer has been underexplored in the field of organic electronics. This work focuses on the development of new polymer blends based on a low molecular weight linear polyethylene (LPE) derivative with a high-performance diketopyrrolopyrrole-based semiconducting polymer. Physical blending of the polyethylene with semiconducting polymers was performed at ratios varying from 0 to 75 wt.%, and the resulting blends were carefully characterized to reveal their electronic and solid-state properties. The new polymer blends were also characterized to reveal the influence of polyethylene on the mechanical robustness and stretchability of the semiconducting polymer. Overall, the introduction of LPE was shown to have little to no effect on the solid-state properties of the materials, despite some influence on solid-state morphology through phase separation. Organic field-effect transistors prepared from the new blends showed good device characteristics, even at higher ratios of polyethylene, with an average mobility of 0.151 cm2 V−1 s−1 at a 25 wt.% blend ratio. The addition of polyethylene was shown to have a plasticizing effect on the semiconducting polymers, helping to reduce crack width upon strain and contributing to devices accommodating more strain without suffering from decreased performance. The new blends presented in this work provide a novel platform from which to access more mechanically robust organic electronics and show promising features for the utilization of polyethylene for the solution processing of advanced semiconducting materials toward novel soft electronics and sensors.
Detection and characterization of biomolecular interactions,
such
as protein–protein interactions (PPIs), are critical to a fundamental
understanding of biochemical processes, thus being a driver of innovation
for drug discovery, clinical diagnostics, and protein engineering.
Among the many sensor types used to probe PPIs, organic field-effect
transistors are particularly desirable due to their unique features,
including tunability, sensitivity, low-power requirements, and multi-parameter
readouts. This work describes the development of a biosensor based
on organic field-effect transistors, covalently functionalized at
the surface with an engineered ubiquitin variant for the specific
and sensitive detection of ubiquitin-specific protease 8 (USP8). The
resulting sensor was carefully characterized to reveal both electronic
and solid-state properties. The sensing platform showed high sensitivity
(sub-nanomolar analyte concentrations) and selectivity for USP8 and
robust performance that suggests that it may be highly tunable. The
sensing system introduced in this work provides a detection method
for PPIs, which constitutes a promising platform for advanced biotechnology
applications.
We investigated the self-assembly of polymers in supercritical fluids by depositing thin films of isotactic polypropylene from n-pentane:acetone solutions and studying their structure. The deposition technique leverages a maximum in...
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