Organic conducting polymer, poly(3,4-ethylene dioxythiophene)-poly(styrene sulfonate)
(PEDOT:PSS), is widely recognized for its electro-actuation mechanism and is used in flexible electronics. Its high potential as actuator is based on a strong coupling between chemical, mechanical and electrical properties which directly depends on external stimuli. There is no model today to describe the interplay between moisture absorption, mechanical expansion and electrical stimulus. Elucidating the role of each component in the effective actuation properties is needed to further optimize and tailor such materials.
The objective of this thesis is to develop a macroscopic model to describe water sorption kinetics of the PEDOT:PSS film. We used gravimetric analysis of pure PEDOT:PSS film of three different thicknesses to investigate absorption kinetics over a broad range of temperatures and relative humidity. Our results revealed that the moisture uptake of PEDOT:PSS film does not follow Fickian diffusion law due to the
retained amount of water after desorption process. We used an existing diffusionreaction model to describe this behavior, and COMSOL Multiphysics and MATLAB software programs to implement it. We observed that the generic model we used in our work could predict polymer behavior with 95% accuracy. However, our model was not able to properly represent the data at very high relative humidity at low temperature, which was attributed to the excessive swelling of the film. Also, we examined a relation between the moisture content of PEDOT:PSS and its mechanical strain and electrical
conductivity. The results presented here are the first step towards a general multiphysics electro-thermo-mechanical description of PEDOT:PSS based actuators.
Date of Award | Jul 2018 |
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Original language | English (US) |
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Awarding Institution | - Physical Sciences and Engineering
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Supervisor | Gilles Lubineau (Supervisor) |
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- PEDOT : PSS
- diffusion-reaction
- moisture uptake