An Electrochemical Gelation Method for Patterning Conductive PEDOT:PSS Hydrogels

Abstract

Due to their high water content and macroscopic connectivity, hydrogels made from the conducting polymer PEDOT:PSS are a promising platform from which to fabricate a wide range of porous conductive materials that are increasingly of interest in applications as varied as bioelectronics, regenerative medicine, and energy storage. Despite the promising properties of PEDOT:PSS‐based porous materials, the ability to pattern PEDOT:PSS hydrogels is still required to enable their integration with multifunctional and multichannel electronic devices. In this work, a novel electrochemical gelation (“electrogelation”) method is presented for rapidly patterning PEDOT:PSS hydrogels on any conductive template, including curved and 3D surfaces. High spatial resolution is achieved through use of a sacrificial metal layer to generate the hydrogel pattern, thereby enabling high‐performance conducting hydrogels and aerogels with desirable material properties to be introduced into increasingly complex device architectures.

Printable, Highly Sensitive Flexible Temperature Sensors for Human Body Temperature Monitoring: A Review

“…Hydrogels have received continuous attention in recent years of research [ 120 , 121 ]. Because of its good self-healing ability, excellent toughness and stretchability, and biological adaptability, it has aroused great research interest in application fields such as flexible electronics, health monitoring, and biomedical diagnosis [ 122 , 123 ]. However, ionic hydrogel, as a good ion conductor, can respond to a variety of stimuli, hydrogels with weak mechanical strength, and reduced temperature sensitivity present challenges in applying flexible temperature sensors.…”

Hierarchically Structured Stretchable Conductive Hydrogels for High-Performance Wearable Strain Sensors and Supercapacitors

“…Conducting polymers can be directly made into free-standing and flexible hydrogels by introducing multivalent metal ions 3,16,17 or via post-treatment with as-prepared polymers. 18 Despite their high electrical conductivity, the majority of conducting polymers lack stretchability (<10%) and possess limited mechanical compliance under large strains.…”

“…Newly developed flexible and stretchable electronics seek to bridge the gap between human and machine by either performing human functions, such as in artificial skins 1 and multifunctional prosthetics for assisting human movements, 2 or interfacing with clothing or the human body, such as in conductive interconnects, 3 bioelectronics, 4 wearable sensors, 5 stretchable energy-storage devices, 6,7 and flexible optoelectronic devices. 8 All of these applications require materials that are highly electrically conductive and mechanically compliant.…”

3D printing of conducting polymers

“…onducting polymers, a class of polymers with intrinsic electrical conductivity, have been one of the most promising materials in applications as diverse as energy storage 1 , flexible electronics 2 , and bioelectronics 3 , owing to their unique polymeric nature as well as favorable electrical and mechanical properties, stability, and biocompatibility. Despite recent advances in conducting polymers and their applications, the fabrication of conducting polymer structures and devices have mostly relied on conventional manufacturing techniques such as ink-jet printing [4][5][6] , screen printing 7 , aerosol printing [8][9][10] , electrochemical patterning [11][12][13] , and lithography [14][15][16] with limitations and challenges. For example, these existing manufacturing techniques for conducting polymers are limited to low-resolution (e.g., over 100 µm), two-dimensional (e.g., low aspect ratio) patterns, and/or complex and high cost procedures (e.g., multi-step processes in clean room involving alignments, masks, etchings, post-assemblies) 4,5,7,[14][15][16] (Supplementary Table 1), which have hampered rapid innovations and broad applications of conducting polymers.…”