Electrochemical stability of PEDOT for wearable on-skin application

摘要

Conducting polymers are promising candidates for wearable devices due to mechanical flexibility combined with electroactivity. While electrochemical measurements have been adopted as a central transduction method in many on-skin sensors, less studied is the stability of the active materials (in particular poly3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene, PEDOT) in such systems, particularly for "on-skin" applications. In this study, several different variants of doped PEDOT are fabricated and characterized in terms of their (electrical, physical, and chemical) stability in biological fluid. PEDOT doped with tosylate (TOS) or polystyrenesulfonate (PSS) are selected as prototypical forms of conducting polymers. These are compared with a new variant of PEDOT co-doped with both TOS and PSS. Artificial interstitial fluid (aISF) loaded with 1 wt/vol bovine serum albumin is adopted as the testing medium to demonstrate the stability in dermal applications (i.e., conducting polymer microneedles or coatings on microneedles). A range of techniques such as cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy are used to qualify and quantify the stability of the doped conducting polymers. Furthermore, this study is extended by using human skin lysate in the aISF to demonstrate proof-of-concept for stable use of PEDOT in wearable "on-skin" electronics.