i-School of Green Energy, UNIST, Ulsan 689-798, Korea.
Sci Rep. 2013;3:2454. doi: 10.1038/srep02454.
Electric conductivity of conducting polymers has been steadily enhanced towards a level worthy of being called its alias, "synthetic metal". PEDOT:PSS (poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) doped with poly(styrene sulfonate)), as a representative conducting polymer, recently reached around 3,000 S cm(-1), the value to open the possibility to replace transparent conductive oxides. The leading strategy to drive the conductivity increase is solvent annealing in which aqueous solution of PEDOT:PSS is treated with an assistant solvent such as DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide). In addition to the conductivity enhancement, we found that the potential range in which PEDOT:PSS is conductive is tuned wider into a negative potential direction by the DMSO-annealing. Also, the increase in a redox-active fraction of charge carriers is proposed to be responsible for the enhancement of conductivity in the solvent annealing process.
导电聚合物的电导率不断提高，朝着被称为其别名“合成金属”的水平迈进。PEDOT:PSS（聚（3,4-亚乙基二氧噻吩）掺杂聚（苯乙烯磺酸盐））作为一种代表性的导电聚合物，最近达到了约 3000 S cm-1，这一数值为替代透明导电氧化物开辟了可能性。提高电导率的主要策略是溶剂退火，其中将 PEDOT:PSS 的水溶液用辅助溶剂（如 DMSO（二甲基亚砜））处理。除了提高电导率外，我们还发现 DMSO 退火还可以将 PEDOT:PSS 的导电电位范围调宽到负电位方向。此外，氧化还原活性载流子分数的增加被认为是溶剂退火过程中电导率提高的原因。
