High Performance Organic Mixed Ionic-Electronic Polymeric Conductor with Stability to Autoclave Sterilization

Abstract

We present a series of newly developed donor-acceptor (D-A) polymers designed specifically for organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) synthesized by a straightforward route. All polymers exhibited accumulation mode behavior in OECT devices, and tuning of the donor comonomer resulted in a three-order-of-magnitude increase in transconductance. The best polymer gFBT-g2T, exhibited normalized peak transconductance (g_m,norm) of 298±10.4 S cm⁻¹ with a corresponding product of charge-carrier mobility and volumetric capacitance, μC*, of 847 F V⁻¹ cm⁻¹ s⁻¹ and a μ of 5.76 cm² V⁻¹ s⁻¹, amongst the highest reported to date. Furthermore, gFBT-g2T exhibited exceptional temperature stability, maintaining the outstanding electrochemical performance even after undergoing a standard (autoclave) high pressure steam sterilization procedure. Steam treatment was also found to promote film porosity, with the formation of circular 200–400 nm voids. These results demonstrate the potential of gFBT-g2T in p-type accumulation mode OECTs, and pave the way for the use in implantable bioelectronics for medical applications.