PEDOT:PSS (poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonic acid) is one of the most common conductive polymers due to its high conductivity, flexibility, transparency and its film forming capability. PSS allows for the suspension of PEDOT in water, which is a necessity due to its insolubility in most solvents and is the main reason it is used. However, PSS is a known insulating material and most methods to dope PEDOT:PSS involve disassociating some of the PSS from the PEDOT. One alternative to doping to improve the conductivity of PEDOT is to spin-coat the polymer onto a conductive material such as graphene, but producing graphene can be challenging and expensive, since most methods to exfoliate graphite require high energy input or harmful solvents and CVD produces only one sheet at a time. Our group has developed a method to exfoliate graphite to graphene using a high energy interface. The graphene spontaneously exfoliates to minimize the interfacial energy between the water and the oil and we call this the surface interface trapping method (SITM). If EDOT is introduced during exfoliation of graphite during SITM, it π-π stacks on the graphene, allowing for later polymerization to PEDOT. In the case of graphene-stabilized water-in-oil emulsions, the presence of EDOT enhances the stability of the emulsion and improves the properties of resulting composites. EDOT can also be introduced to pre-formed graphene films and composites and subsequently polymerized to create conductive films with greater conductivity than either component separately.

Enhancement of the surface interface trapping method to exfoliate graphite flakes to graphene by coating with PEDOT

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.