Organic electronics on micro and nano fibers : from e-textiles to biomolecular nanoelectronics

Abstract: Research in the field of conjugated polymers (CPs) has led to the emergence of a number of interesting research areas and commercial applications, including solar cells, flexible displays, printed electronics, biosensors, e-textiles and more.Some of the advantages of organic electronics materials, as compared to their inorganic counterparts, include high elasticity, and mechanical flexibility, which allows for a natural integration of CPs into fabrics, making them ideal for e-texile. In this thesis, a novel approach for creating transistors is presented, through the construction of electrolyte gated transistors, directly embedded on functional textile fibers. Furthermore theoretical and experimental results of the integration of functional woven devices based on these transistors are shown. The realization of woven digital logic and design schemes for devices that can be placed inside living tissue, for applications such as neural communication, are demonstrated.Reducing feature sizes in organic electronics is necessity just as in conventional microelectronics, where Moore's law has been the most impressive demonstration of this over the past decades. Here the scheme of self-assembly (SA) of biomolecular/CP hybrid nano-structures is used for creating nano electronics. It is demonstrated that proteins in the form of amyloid fibrils can be coated with the highly conducting polythiophene derivative (PEDOT-S) through molecular self-assembly in water, to form conducting nanowire networks and nanodevices at molecular dimensions. In a second SA scheme, large area patterning of connected micro-nano lines and nano transistors from the conducting polymer PEDOT-S is demonstrated through assembly of these from fluids using soft lithography. Thereby the problems of large area nano patterning, and nano registration are solved for organic electronics. The construction of functional nanoscopic materials and components through molecular self-assembly has the potential to deliver totally new concepts, and may eventually allow cheap mass production of complex three dimensional nano electronic materials and devices.