TY - JOUR
T1 - Electrically Conductive and Highly Stretchable Piezoresistive Polymer Nanocomposites via Oxidative Chemical Vapor Deposition
AU - Mukherjee, Adrivit
AU - Dianatdar, Afshin
AU - Gładysz, Magdalena Z.
AU - Hemmatpour, Hamoon
AU - Hendriksen, Mart
AU - Rudolf, Petra
AU - Włodarczyk-Biegun, Małgorzata K.
AU - Kamperman, Marleen
AU - Prakash Kottapalli, Ajay Giri
AU - Bose, Ranjita K.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge the efforts of Jur van Dijken in conducting the TGA measurements. This work benefited from financial support by the Advanced Materials Research Program of the Zernike National Research Centre under the Bonus Incentive Scheme of the Dutch Ministry for Education, Culture, and Science.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.
PY - 2023/7/5
Y1 - 2023/7/5
N2 - Electrically conductive polymer nanocomposites have been the subject of intense research due to their promising potential as piezoresistive biomedical sensors, leveraging their flexibility and biocompatibility. Although intrinsically conductive polymers such as polypyrrole (PPy) and polyaniline have emerged as lucrative candidates, they are extremely limited in their processability by conventional solution-based approaches. In this work, ultrathin nanostructured coatings of doped PPy are realized on polyurethane films of different architectures via oxidative chemical vapor deposition to develop stretchable and flexible resistance-based strain sensors. Holding the substrates perpendicular to the reactant flows facilitates diffusive transport and ensures excellent conformality of the interfacial integrated PPy coatings throughout the 3D porous electrospun fiber mats in a single step. This allows the mechanically robust (stretchability > 400%, with fatigue resistance up to 1000 cycles) nanocomposites to elicit a reversible change of electrical resistance when subjected to consecutive cycles of stretching and releasing. The repeatable performance of the strain sensor is linear due to dimensional changes of the conductive network in the low-strain regime (ϵ ≤ 50%), while the evolution of nano-cracks leads to an exponential increase, which is observed in the high-strain regime, recording a gauge factor as high as 46 at 202% elongational strain. The stretchable conductive polymer nanocomposites also show biocompatibility toward human dermal fibroblasts, thus providing a promising path for use as piezoresistive strain sensors and finding applications in biomedical applications such as wearable, skin-mountable flexible electronics.
AB - Electrically conductive polymer nanocomposites have been the subject of intense research due to their promising potential as piezoresistive biomedical sensors, leveraging their flexibility and biocompatibility. Although intrinsically conductive polymers such as polypyrrole (PPy) and polyaniline have emerged as lucrative candidates, they are extremely limited in their processability by conventional solution-based approaches. In this work, ultrathin nanostructured coatings of doped PPy are realized on polyurethane films of different architectures via oxidative chemical vapor deposition to develop stretchable and flexible resistance-based strain sensors. Holding the substrates perpendicular to the reactant flows facilitates diffusive transport and ensures excellent conformality of the interfacial integrated PPy coatings throughout the 3D porous electrospun fiber mats in a single step. This allows the mechanically robust (stretchability > 400%, with fatigue resistance up to 1000 cycles) nanocomposites to elicit a reversible change of electrical resistance when subjected to consecutive cycles of stretching and releasing. The repeatable performance of the strain sensor is linear due to dimensional changes of the conductive network in the low-strain regime (ϵ ≤ 50%), while the evolution of nano-cracks leads to an exponential increase, which is observed in the high-strain regime, recording a gauge factor as high as 46 at 202% elongational strain. The stretchable conductive polymer nanocomposites also show biocompatibility toward human dermal fibroblasts, thus providing a promising path for use as piezoresistive strain sensors and finding applications in biomedical applications such as wearable, skin-mountable flexible electronics.
KW - biocompatible
KW - electrically conductive nanocomposite
KW - electrospinning
KW - interface
KW - oxidative chemical vapor deposition
KW - polypyrrole
KW - stretchable piezoresistive strain sensor
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85164238875&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1021/acsami.3c06015
DO - 10.1021/acsami.3c06015
M3 - Article
C2 - 37345686
AN - SCOPUS:85164238875
SN - 1944-8244
VL - 15
SP - 31899−31916
JO - ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
JF - ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
ER -