Controlling morphology, adhesion, and electrochromic behavior of <scp>PEDOT</scp> films through molecular design and processing

Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) is a well-known semiconducting polymer with favorable properties which find it often applied as the active material in biological sensors and electrochromic devices. However, PEDOT has several drawbacks can prohibit its effective or long-term use, including weak adhesion to substrates such ITO-coated glass, poorly controlled surface morphology, reduced electrochemical stability over time. While diverse range of approaches have been explored overcome these issues, most involve additives substrate modification, while solutions based on direct covalent adaptation are relatively lacking. We present novel covalently modified EDOT (PEDOT-Crown), featuring polar motifs 15-crown-5 moiety. Compared PEDOT, PEDOT-Crown demonstrates wealth advantageous including: superior ITO under physical duress; more uniform morphology; higher contrast ratio, red-shifted polaron bipolaron absorption features, bleaching neutral band across narrower voltage range, Faradaic rather than capacitive behavior. Additionally, we note that presence Na+, appears show behavior experiments. These features make improved suitability for application sensing devices, compared PEDOT.