Abstract:
“Research on flexible biocompatible conductive materials has been burgeoning over the last decades due to the huge number of applications in bioelectronics. Recently, conductive bioelectronic devices based on commercial PEDOT:PSS (3,4-poly(ethylenedioxythiophene) : poly(styrene sulfonate) have been developed, using conductive hydrogels as contact electrodes. The soft and flexible nature of these polymer networks make them suitable candidates for electronics/soft tissue interface. However, those conductive materials display some limitations for in vivo implantation due to problems of biocompatibility and biodegradability of PSS. In this work, we aimed to replace PSS by a modified hyaluronic acid (HA) derivative to develop a new biocompatible and degradable PEDOT dopant. This HA derivative enabled to design a new biocompatible, degradable, printable and cross-linkable PEDOT-based ink, and as well, served as an extracellular-matrix-mimicking building block for the construction of pure conductive hydrogels. These properties could enable the design of soft transient electronic devices, which could avoid implant removal surgery.”
