Desroches, Pauline E., Fraysse, Kilian S., Silva, Saimon M., Firipis, Kate, Merenda, Andrea, Han, Mingyu, Dumée, Ludovic F., Quigley, Anita F., Kapsa, Robert.M.I., O'Connel, Cathal D., Moulton, Simon E., and Greene, George W. more...
• A new synthesis strategy using surface-tethered dopants enables the fabrication of transparent conductive polymers only a few nanometers thick. • Lubricin can be used as a surface-tethered dopant for electropolymerization. • Ultrathin and transparent conducting polymers are electrochemically prepared using lubricin as a dopant. The electrochemical growth of conductive polymer films is a convenient synthesis route but challenging to control due to local variability in the reaction kinetics. Here we report a new method for electropolymerizing highly reproducible conductive polypyrrole films that are just nanometers thick, highly conductive and possess intrinsic optical transparencies comparable to ITO. The synthesis method utilizes a surface-tethered dopant molecule, in this case a self-assembled monolayer of the highly anionic protein lubricin (LUB), to template and thus control the 3-dimensional growth of the polypyrrole when the electrochemical polymerization reaction is performed in a pyrrole monomer solution containing no additional dopant molecules or ions. Because the tethered dopant controls where and how much polypyrrole growth occurs, this method effectively decouples the fine film morphology, thickness, and spatial-growth from the polymerization reaction kinetics and represents a paradigm shift in the electrochemical polymerization of conductive polymer films. Poorly controllable electrochemical growth synthesis route is being challenged here by a tethered dopant system, using self-assembled layers of lubricin (LUB). The growth of these conductive polymer films is controlled by the structure and morphology of the tethered LUB layer dopant, leading to an nanometers-thin and ultra-uniform thin conductive film, ideally suited to coating micro/nanostructured or intricately shaped electrodes. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] more...