Transparent electrodes for the flexible electronics pose a unique challenge to the materials scientists by requiring materials that are concurrently electrically, optically, mechanically, thermally as well as chemically stable. Conducting metal oxides deposition on organic substrates, particularly on transparent polymeric surfaces has been gathering great attention due to its potential applications in the field of flexible micro-electronics, circuit board optics, sensors, etc. Out of the varieties of polymeric substrates, polyimides are well known to show the most promising blend of the thermal and the mechanical properties with good film forming ability, low dielectric constant, high chemical resistance and low coefficient of thermal expansion.<br/>We recently developed transparent biopolyimides with a high thermo-resistance from biologically derived exotic amino acid, 4-aminocinnamic acid (4ACA), which shows softening temperature high enough to be compatible with some metal oxides. In order to prepare surface conductive flexible films with high transparency, indium tin oxide (ITO) has been grown over biopolyimide having functional side chains derived from 4ACA as a transparent flexible substrate. Furthermore, a smart surface-modification of polyimide has been attempted for the first time to enhance the adhesion strength of the ITO. The surface properties, composition, microstructure, surface morphology, electrical and optical properties have been characterized by contact-angle measurements, FT-IR, XPS, UV–Vis, X-ray diffraction, AFM and SEM. It was found that the biopolyimide (as well as surface modified) coated with ITO exhibits better conductivity retain-ability upon stress, greater transparency and smoother surface as compared to the Kapton<sup>TM</sup>.

Nanohybrid films of functional biopolyimides with metal oxides by simple surface-engineering

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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