Book Description

Over the past few decades, there has been tremendous development on soft materials in soft robotics, energy generation and sensing applications. These soft materials are mostly polymers. Their compliant elasticity, good adaptability to external constraints, and biocompatibility make them suitable for those applications. Further, polymers that respond by changing their shape or size to an external stimulus such as electric field, magnetic field, heat, pressure, pH, and light have great potential for these applications. Among these stimuli responsive materials, electro responsive polymers (electroactive polymers (EAPs)) acquires great attention. Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) have attracted great attention since their discovery in 1984 due to their flexibility, biocompatibility, easy fabrication and tunability through synthetic chemistry. As OECTs conduct both electronic and ionic charge, they are suitable for bioelectronic applications, such as recording electric activity of cells and tissues, detection of ions, metabolites, antigens related with various diseases, hormones, DNA, enzymes and neurotransmitter. In my dissertation, I will describe how we developed ionic electroactive polymers (iEAPs) and ionic liquid crystal elastomers (iLCEs) for the applications of soft robotics, energy harvesting (flexo-ionic effect), sensing and organic electrochemical transistors. Firstly, we engineered poly (ethylene glycol) diacrylate based iEAPs for soft robotics application. Here, low voltage induced bending (converse flexoelectricity) of crosslinked poly (ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA), modified with thiosi-loxane (TS) and ionic liquid (1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophos-phate) (IL) is studied. In between 2[mu]m PEDOT:PSS electrodes at 1 V, it provides durable (95% retention under 5000 cycles) and relatively fast (2 s switching time) actuation with the second largest strain observed so far in iEAPs. In between 40 nm gold electrodes under 8 V DC voltage, the film can be completely curled up (270° bending angle) with 6% strain that, to the best of the knowledge, is unpreceded among iEAPs. These results render great potential for the TS/PEGDA/IL based electro-active actuators for soft robotic applications. Next, we developed an advanced electroactive anisotropic soft material using liquid crystals elastomers. Anisotropic characteristic of liquid crystals gives an additional degree of freedom than isotropic polymers to design these soft materials by programming the molecular structure. We invented a new class of electroactive material named ionic liquid crystal elastomers (iLCEs), where ionic liquid is incorporated in the polymer matrix. We demonstrated that the iLCEs can be used in mechanoelectrical transconduction (energy harvesting, flexo-ionic effect and bending sensing applications). Piezoelectricity and flexoelectricity are the two major classes of mechanoelectrical transconduction, where electrical current and voltages are generated in response to strain gradient in the latter as opposed to extensional strain in the former. Flexo-ionic effect is a similar phenomenon as flexoelectricity, where ionic polarization results in electric generation due to bending of polymer films. Here, we investigate the molecular alignment dependence of the flexoelectric coefficient and the sensitivity of the iLCEs. The measured flexo-ionic coefficients were found to strongly depend on the director alignment of the iLCE films and can be over 200[mu]C/m. This value is orders of magnitude higher than the flexo-electric coefficient found in insulating liquid crystals and is comparable to the well-developed ionic polymers (iEAPs). The shortest response times, i.e., the largest bandwidth of the flexo-ionic responses, is achieved in planar alignment, when the director is uniformly parallel to the substrates. These results render high potential for iLCE-based devices for applications in sensors and wearable micropower generators. Finally, we developed a substrate free, flexible OECT based on iLCE. We demonstrated that iLCEs can be used as solid electrolytes of OECTs. The precise control of the liquid-crystalline phase of the iLCE provides a means to control and tune the ion flow within the elastomer. Either isotropic films or films with a planar alignment led to higher ionic conductivities compared to a homeotropic or hybrid alignment. The normalized maximum transconductance gm/w of the most sensitive iLCE, was found to be the highest (7 Sm-1) among all solid state-based OECTs. The normalized maximum transconductance gm/w depends on the alignment of the elastomers, and the highest performance was found for isotropic and planar orientation. Similarly, the transient response of OECTs to square voltage pulses applied to the gate electrode is faster for devices with elastomers that provide high ionic conductivity. Switching times are in the few seconds range, which is comparable to previously reported OECTs based on solid electrolytes. iLCEs provide a new materials class that shows promise as electrolytes in OECTs. Furthermore, we characterized this OECT as a bending sensor. Advantages of this sensor are low voltage operation, high sensitivity, ability to sense the direction (i.e., upward or downward/left or right) of bending.