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Peter Ekström

Senior lecturer

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Method Matters : Exploring Alkoxysulfonate-Functionalized Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) and Its Unintentional Self-Aggregating Copolymer toward Injectable Bioelectronics

Author

  • Abdelrazek H. Mousa
  • David Bliman
  • Lazaro Hiram Betancourt
  • Karin Hellman
  • Peter Ekström
  • Marios Savvakis
  • Xenofon Strakosas
  • György Marko-Varga
  • Magnus Berggren
  • Martin Hjort
  • Fredrik Ek
  • Roger Olsson

Summary, in English

Injectable bioelectronics could become an alternative or a complement to traditional drug treatments. To this end, a new self-doped p-type conducting PEDOT-S copolymer (A5) was synthesized. This copolymer formed highly water-dispersed nanoparticles and aggregated into a mixed ion-electron conducting hydrogel when injected into a tissue model. First, we synthetically repeated most of the published methods for PEDOT-S at the lab scale. Surprisingly, analysis using high-resolution matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-mass spectroscopy showed that almost all the methods generated PEDOT-S derivatives with the same polymer lengths (i.e., oligomers, seven to eight monomers in average); thus, the polymer length cannot account for the differences in the conductivities reported earlier. The main difference, however, was that some methods generated an unintentional copolymer P(EDOT-S/EDOT-OH) that is more prone to aggregate and display higher conductivities in general than the PEDOT-S homopolymer. Based on this, we synthesized the PEDOT-S derivative A5, that displayed the highest film conductivity (33 S cm-1) among all PEDOT-S derivatives synthesized. Injecting A5 nanoparticles into the agarose gel cast with a physiological buffer generated a stable and highly conductive hydrogel (1-5 S cm-1), where no conductive structures were seen in agarose with the other PEDOT-S derivatives. Furthermore, the ion-treated A5 hydrogel remained stable and maintained initial conductivities for 7 months (the longest period tested) in pure water, and A5 mixed with Fe3O4 nanoparticles generated a magnetoconductive relay device in water. Thus, we have successfully synthesized a water-processable, syringe-injectable, and self-doped PEDOT-S polymer capable of forming a conductive hydrogel in tissue mimics, thereby paving a way for future applications within in vivo electronics.

Department/s

  • Chemical Biology and Therapeutics
  • Clinical Chemistry, Malmö
  • Clinical Protein Science and Imaging
  • MultiPark: Multidisciplinary research focused on Parkinson´s disease
  • National Resource Centre for Physics Education
  • Nuclear physics
  • NanoLund: Centre for Nanoscience

Publishing year

2022

Language

English

Pages

2752-2763

Publication/Series

Chemistry of Materials

Volume

34

Issue

6

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

The American Chemical Society (ACS)

Topic

  • Materials Chemistry
  • Polymer Chemistry

Status

Published

Research group

  • Chemical Biology and Therapeutics
  • Clinical Chemistry, Malmö
  • Clinical Protein Science and Imaging

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0897-4756