Visible-Light-Driven Aqueous Polymerization Enables in Situ Formation of Biocompatible, High-Performance Organic...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Polymer Chemistry
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Organic mixed ion-electron conductors (OMIECs) offer unique properties like mechanical softness and biocompatibility.
• Current OMIEC synthesis methods often use harsh chemicals, limiting scalability and sustainability.
• OMIECs are crucial for applications such as organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs), energy storage, and neural interfaces.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel, sustainable, and biocompatible method for synthesizing OMIECs.
• To enable facile fabrication of high-performance OMIECs and devices through photopolymerization.
• To demonstrate the utility of these materials in advanced electronic applications, including in-vivo sensing.

Main Methods:

• Initiator-free, visible-light-induced polymerization of water-soluble conducting polymer precursors.
• Direct photopatterning and film deposition on diverse substrates (glass, textiles, mouse skin).
• Optimization of photopolymerization for enhanced material properties and device performance.

Main Results:

• Facile formation of high-performance, inherently biocompatible OMIECs.
• Successful manufacturing of OECTs on rigid, flexible, and biological substrates, including in-vivo mouse skin.
• Demonstrated enhanced recording efficacy and signal-to-noise ratio for low-frequency brain activity using photopatterned electrodes on mouse skin.

Conclusions:

• Visible-light-induced polymerization offers a scalable, sustainable, and biocompatible route to advanced OMIECs.
• This method facilitates direct device fabrication on various surfaces, including biological tissues.
• The developed OMIECs show significant potential for next-generation bioelectronic devices and in-vivo sensing applications.