Chamria Div, Alpha Christopher, Adhikari Ramesh Y
Department of Physics & Astronomy, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, New York 13346, United States.
Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility, 250 Duffield Hall, Ithaca, New York 14853, United States.
ACS Omega. 2023 Feb 15;8(8):7791-7799. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.2c07501. eCollection 2023 Feb 28.
Biological materials such as amino acids are attractive due to their smaller environmental footprint, ease of functionalization, and potential for creating biocompatible surfaces for devices. Here, we report the facile assembly and characterization of highly conductive films of composites of phenylalanine, one of the essential amino acids, and PEDOT:PSS, a commonly used conducting polymer. We have observed that introducing aromatic amino acid phenylalanine into PEDOT:PSS to form composite films can improve the conductivity of the films by up to a factor of 230 compared to the conductivity of pristine PEDOT:PSS film. In addition, the conductivity of the composite films can be tuned by varying the amount of phenylalanine in PEDOT:PSS. Using DC and AC measurement techniques, we have determined that the conduction in the highly conductive composite films thus created is due to improvement in the electron transport efficiency compared to the charge transport in pure PEDOT:PSS films. Using SEM and AFM, we demonstrate that this could be due to the phase separation of PSS chains from PEDOT:PSS globules which can create efficient charge transport pathways. Fabricating composites of bioderived amino acids with conducting polymers using facile techniques such as the one we report here opens up opportunities for the development of low-cost biocompatible and biodegradable electronic materials with desired electronic properties.
诸如氨基酸之类的生物材料具有吸引力，这是因为它们对环境的影响较小、易于功能化，并且有潜力为设备创造生物相容性表面。在此，我们报告了一种必需氨基酸苯丙氨酸与常用导电聚合物聚（3,4-乙撑二氧噻吩）：聚苯乙烯磺酸盐（PEDOT:PSS）的复合材料的高导电薄膜的简便组装及表征。我们观察到，将芳香族氨基酸苯丙氨酸引入PEDOT:PSS以形成复合薄膜，与原始PEDOT:PSS薄膜的电导率相比，可使薄膜的电导率提高多达230倍。此外，复合薄膜的电导率可通过改变PEDOT:PSS中苯丙氨酸的含量来调节。使用直流和交流测量技术，我们确定，由此产生的高导电复合薄膜中的传导是由于与纯PEDOT:PSS薄膜中的电荷传输相比，电子传输效率得到了提高。使用扫描电子显微镜（SEM）和原子力显微镜（AFM），我们证明这可能是由于聚苯乙烯磺酸盐（PSS）链与PEDOT:PSS球粒的相分离，这可以创造有效的电荷传输途径。使用我们在此报告的简便技术来制造生物衍生氨基酸与导电聚合物的复合材料，为开发具有所需电子性能的低成本生物相容性和可生物降解电子材料开辟了机会。
