Title
Tuning of the elastic modulus of a soft polythiophene through molecular doping
Date Issued
01 January 2022
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Zokaei S.
Kim D.
Järsvall E.
Fenton A.M.
Weisen A.R.
Hultmark S.
Nguyen P.H.
Matheson A.M.
Lund A.
Kroon R.
Chabinyc M.L.
Zozoulenko I.
Müller C.
Publisher(s)
Royal Society of Chemistry
Abstract
Molecular doping of a polythiophene with oligoethylene glycol side chains is found to strongly modulate not only the electrical but also the mechanical properties of the polymer. An oxidation level of up to 18% results in an electrical conductivity of more than 52 S cm-1 and at the same time significantly enhances the elastic modulus from 8 to more than 200 MPa and toughness from 0.5 to 5.1 MJ m-3. These changes arise because molecular doping strongly influences the glass transition temperature Tg and the degree of π-stacking of the polymer, as indicated by both X-ray diffraction and molecular dynamics simulations. Surprisingly, a comparison of doped materials containing mono-or dianions reveals that-for a comparable oxidation level-the presence of multivalent counterions has little effect on the stiffness. Evidently, molecular doping is a powerful tool that can be used for the design of mechanically robust conducting materials, which may find use within the field of flexible and stretchable electronics.
Start page
433
End page
443
Volume
9
Issue
1
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Química física
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85122867211
PubMed ID
Source
Materials Horizons
ISSN of the container
20516347
Sponsor(s)
We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Swedish Research Council (grants no. 2018-03824 and 2016-05990) and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation through a Wallen-berg Academy Fellowship Prolongation grant as well as the project ‘‘Mastering Morphology of Solution-Borne Electronics’’. A. F., A. W. and E. D. G. acknowledge support from the U.S. National Science Foundation under award DMR-1921854. Research at UCSB was sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Office and accomplished under cooperative agreement W911NF-19-2-0026 for the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies. This work was carried out in part at the Chalmers materials analysis laboratory (CMAL). The computations were performed on resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) at NSC and HPC2N.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus