Stretchable and biodegradable electronic materials with properties matching that of human skin has the potential to lead a new class of wearable and implantable healthcare devices. Biomedical sensors require stretchable/deformable, durable materials to ensure reliable performance for long-lifetime use. Biodegradable devices, on the other hand, improve quality of life by precluding a second surgery to remove an implantable device, and reduce the waste of wearable devices. One class of materials required for the development of such devices is stretchable and biodegradable semiconductors which can be used in various kinds of devices (e.g., mechanical, thermal, optical, or chemical devices). Currently, the only reported approach to making these materials mechanically compliant is based on silicon nanomembranes, and requires microfabrication techniques that can be expensive. Polymer semiconductors, on the other hand, have great potential for scalable and printable manufacturing. In this presentation, we report the synthesis and characterization of novel BCPs including a diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP)-based polymer and Poly-ε-caprolactone (PCL) (Figure. 1a). We examined BCPs having different weight ratio of each segment, and high ratio of PCL (&gt; 50wt%) show significant improvement of elongation at break (&gt; 200%) (Figure. 1b, c). On the other hand, PCL segments were degradable by base etching, which supports biodegradability (Figure. 1d). The approach shown this work can be applied for any donor-acceptor polymers synthesized by coupling polymerization.

Molecular design of stretchable and biodegradable semiconducting block copolymers

254th National Meeting (2017)

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